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Self- Consciousness 



OP 



Noted Persons. 



" For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 

This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, 
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?" 

Gray. 



COMPILED IN LEISURE HOURS, 

By J. S. M. 



^rtnteti for ^rtbate JBtstrtfmtton. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

Hmbersttg ^ress. 

1882. 



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FED 

sU.Q.i 3. X 



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THE LIBRARY 
OF C ONGR ESS 

WASHINGTOH 

" J V-imi U-i i 1 " ' i L '.U1 



Ml 



Copyright, 1882, 
By John Wilson and Son. 



CONTENTS. 



Adams, John . . 
Adams, John Quincy 
Alexander the Great . 
Allen, Ethan . . . 
Angelo, Michael . . 



Page 
64 

66 
13 

68 
74 



Bacon, Francis 14 

Benton, Thomas H 68 

Bismarck, Prince 77 

Boswell, James 36 

Brougham, Henry, Lord . . 45 

Browne, Sir Thomas ... 24 

Bryant, William C 70 

Bulwer, Edward, Lord Lytton 53 

Burke, Edmund 28 

Burns, Robert 28 

Burton 63 

Byron, Lord George Gordon . 41 

Campbell, Lord John ... 38 

Campbell, Thomas .... 40 

Carlyle 51 

Cavour, Count 55 

Chambord, Comte de ... 8 

Chateaubriand 10 

Chatham, Earl of 44 

Chatterton ....... 27 

Cicero 60 

Coke, Sir Edward .... 37 

Corbiac, Pierre de . . . . 9 

Czar of Russia 13 



Page 

Dante 73 

Danton 8 

De Quincey, Thomas , ... 55 

Dickens 29 

Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield . 50 

Dryden 22 

Dumas, Alexandre .... 8 

Elizabeth, Queen 14 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo ... 72 

Erskine 29 

Fielding, Henry 27 

Francis, Sir Philip (Junius) . 43 

Franklin, Benjamin .... 63 

Gibbon • . . 17 

Godwin 41 

Goethe 56 

Goldsmith 33 

Hawthorne 71 

Hazlitt, William 51 

Heine, Heinrich 56 

Hogarth 24 

Horace 57 

Hugo, Victor 8 

Hume 16 

Jefferson, Thomas .... 65 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel ... 32 

Jonson, Ben 20 

Junius 43 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Kneller, Sir Godfrey .... 31 

Lamb, Charles 43 

Lely, Sir Peter ..... 24 

Longfellow . 78 

Lovejoy, Rev. Owen .... 71 

Luther, Martin 55 

Macaulay 48 

Macbeth, Prof. John W. Vilant 12 

Macready 27 

Marlborough, John Churchill 

(Duke of) ...... 19 

Martineau, Harriet .... 54 

Merimee, Prosper 9 

Metternich, Prince .... 75 

Milton 21 

Montaigne . 4 

Moore, Tom 42 

Napoleon Bonaparte .... 5 

Napoleon, Louis 7 

Nelson, Lord 45 

Ney, Marshal 6 

Ovid 63 

Parr 29 

Paul the Apostle 13 

Petrarch 74 

Phsedrus 58 

Pinkney, William .... 69 

Pliny the Younger .... 61 

Pope, Alexander 23 

Quincey, Thomas de .... 55 



Page 

Quincy, Josiah 66 

Quintilian 59 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua ... 33 

Richelieu 9 

Ruskin 52 

Saint Paul 13 

Sallust 57 

Savage 19 

Scott, Sir Walter 79 

Shaftesbury, Lord .... 25 

Shakespeare 19 

Sheridan 27 

Southey, Robert 30 

Sterne, Laurence 26 

Stevens, Thaddeus .... 70 

Swift, Jonathan 25 

Themistocles 58 

Thucydides 58 

Tocqueville, Alexis de . . . 12 

Trollope, Anthony .... 54 

Voltaire 7 

Webster, Daniel 67 

Wellington ..41 

Wesley, Rev. John .... 26 

Whitman, Walt ..... 72 

Wieland, Christopher M. . . 56 

Wolsey, Cardinal 14 

Wordsworth 39 

Xenophon 58 

Young, Edward 25 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



AMONG mankind there are none so high and none so low 
as to be utterly insensible to fame, or to the approbation 
of their fellow-men. Indeed, all men rather covet both. Not 
always as their due for brain-work, but as a just reward for 
some personal merit. The passion with some becomes con- 
spicuous, possibly offensive ; while with others it is so veiled 
with modesty or with art as to remain a secret even to nearest 
friends. Most men desire no more than fair credit for the 
specialty wherein they have practically excelled, well knowing 
that groundless praise has no adhering quality except as well- 
grounded satire. Few men ever excel all the world in more 
than one faculty. 1 A would-be universal genius is like a boy 
on stilts, soon humbled in the dust. 

Archimedes relied for credit upon his knowledge of mechani- 
cal forces, and not upon any skill as a metaphysician. Cicero 
had to be content with eloquence and knowledge of philosophy, 
rather than with the martial glory of the soldier. John Jacob 
Astor, if he had little taste and genius for poetry, found delight 
in the scramble of business ; nor could he have expected much 
renown as a man of science ; but he could not have been igno- 
rant of his mercantile distinction as a man of enterprise. 

The almost universal passion of the human race to do some- 
thing worthy of remembrance is not only serviceable, but laud- 
able ; and yet the world forbids, even to the most exalted merit, 
the privilege of self-applause, or of blowing one's own trumpet. 

1 Michael Angelo was, however, pre-eminent in three kindred arts : archi- 
tecture, sculpture, and painting. 

1 



2 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

The Romans tired of hearing Cicero refer to himself as their 
savior from Catiline's conspiracy ; and it is doubtful whether 
Washington, while living, could have accepted the title, now so 
freely granted, of " First in war, first in peace, first in the 
hearts of his countrymen." 

Wit, benevolence, and good nature associate together harmo- 
niously ; but the moment that pride and vanity obtrude, discord 
is to be apprehended, and possibly a declaration of war by all 
observers capable of either sneers or kicks. The world, like 
the Irish bruiser, stands ready for a fight with the first man 
who claims to be better than anybody else. 

And yet the physician or surgeon destitute of self-confidence 
in the ready application of his professional skill would soon find 
himself without patients. The judge not known to be con- 
scious of his ability to administer the law with ample knowl- 
edge and rectitude, could not long retain the favor or respect of 
the public. A man may be rich without being ignorant of the 
fact; but the world will not tolerate his proclaiming even the 
real truth from the housetops, except possibly when the tax- 
gatherer is around after an income-tax, and then all agree that 
he may be as ostentatious as he pleases. The grand list, returned 
by each individual, may be warranted to be free of vanity. The 
builder 01 a ship knows in advance what will be her tonnage, 
what the rate of speed, and what the cost ; and, in this case, it 
is only when this knowledge fails that the builder is charged 
with unsupportable vanity. It is the same with the surgeon 
who fails to repair a broken hip-joint : he becomes liable, and 
may be punished for his conceited malpractice. 

There are few nations which do not indulge some pride above 
their contemporaries as to their numbers, extent of empire, 
products, men of renown in war, letters, or science ; but there 
is no one to which all others yield unquestioned pre-eminence. 
If France is elated with her wine, Italy shines in silk, and 
Russia grows strong with hemp. If England is rich in bound- 
less metals, she is not without a rival in the United States, 
greater also in corn and potatoes, cotton and tobacco. Persia 
may have thought much of her astrology, but Poland thought 
more of falconry. If France exalts Napoleon, Great Britain 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 6 

does not forget Wellington. When Germany points to Freder- 
ick the Great, the United States cannot hold back Washington 
or Grant. Every land complacently furnishes its hero. If 
England confidently trusts to the immortality of Shakespeare 
and Milton, every philhellenist points to Homer, as Italy points 
to Dante, Germany to Goethe, Spain to Cervantes, and France 
to Moliere and Corneille. England believes the eloquence of 
Chatham, Burke, and Fox was unrivalled ; but France has no 
idea that Mirabeau or Massillon was ever eclipsed; and the 
United States stoutly affirms that Webster made speeches 
beyond the reach of them all, Demosthenes included. All 
nations unite in the Scotchman's humble prayer, "Lord, gie 
us a guid conceit o 1 oursels." 

Among the earth-born millions, perhaps, in each age some 
single mortal may be raised to the skies, while a goodly num- 
ber, ambitious and confident of an eternity of fame, enjoy undis- 
puted ascendency — " give their little senate laws " — for a brief 
time and within local boundaries, but are not inquired after in 
the next generation or outside of their own neighborhood, and 
their names are no longer recognized by the oldest inhabitant. 
Truly all may say with Shakespeare : — 

"We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

Few, however, envy honors paid after death ; and it must 
be admitted that it is difficult to laugh at honest vanity, or at 
those who claim no more than is found honestly their due, of 
which we find many examples ; but it is a pity that so many 
should place on record claims against posterity which fail to be 
honored. Not infrequently their works are as little sought after 
as almanacs out of date. As Cowper says: — 

" In vain recorded in historic page, 
They court the notice of a future age ; 
Those twinkling, tiny lustres of the land 
Drop one by one from Eame's neglecting hand." 

I have taken some leaves from my scrap-book, with extracts 
from various authors, showing both well-founded and ill-founded 



4 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

ambition to be held in remembrance by posterity, but, mostly, 
well-founded examples, and only a few of persons who have 
mistakenly felt that their names must make 

" The face of heaven so bright, 
That birds shall sing, and think it were not night." 

Others, doubtless, have been more diligent readers than 
myself, and therefore might furnish other and more striking 
examples of self-admiration, or of " wits who get the first taste 
of their own jokes ;" but I shall present only brief illustrations 
of a few of the names which have from time to time attracted, 
as literary curiosities, a little of my attention. Let me add, in 
the words of old Montaigne : — 

" I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and 
have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties 
them." 

B. 1533. MONTAIGNE. D. 1592. 

It appears that " Old Montaigne " set forth all his foibles 
and weaknesses, as a notable and singular instance of a con- 
fession of the truth about one's self ; but that he expected to 
win some reputation from this eccentricity can hardly be 
doubted ; and perhaps he may have also hoped to be credited 
with more than sufficient philosophic merits to offset his other 
follies and undervaluations. He says : — 

" What I find tolerable of mine is not so really and in it- 
self, but in comparison of other worse things that I see well 
enough received. I envy the happiness of those that can please 
and hug themselves in what they do ; for 't is a very easy way 
of being pleased, because a man extracts that pleasure from 
himself; especially if he be constant in his self-conceit." 

Again : — 

" I am not ambitious that any one should love and esteem 
me more, dead than living. The humor of Tiberius is ridicu- 
lous, but yet common, who was more solicitous to extend his 
renown to posterity than to render himself acceptable to men 
of his own time. If I were one of those to whom the world 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 5 

could owe commendation, I would acquit the one half to have 
the other in hand, that their praises might come quick and 
crowding about me, more thick than long, more full than du- 
rable ; and let them cease, in God's name, with my knowledge, 
and when the sweet sound can no longer pierce my ears." 



B. 1769. NAPOLEON. D. 1821. 

At least half the famous men of history, it would appear, 
have not been bashful in asserting their own merits. Napo- 
leon said, " There is nothing in war which I cannot do with 
my own hands." 

" After all, what have I done ? " he exclaimed one day, as if 
to stop the mouth of a flatterer. " Is it anything compared 
with what Christ has done ? " It is evident that he felt any 
empire mightier than his own must have been more than 
mortal. 

He told Las Casas that it was after storming the Bridge at 
Lodi " that he first conceived he was to do great things." 
Shortly after his entry into Milan, in the same year, some one 
hinted to him that, with his vast reputation, it must be no dif- 
ficult matter to establish himself permanently in that duchy. 
" There is a finer throne than that vacant," responded (says 
Alison) the future successor of Charlemagne. 

It is perhaps true that brilliant speech-makers are not always 
the wisest counsellors. " The great orators," said Napoleon, 
" who rule the assemblies by the brilliancy of their eloquence, 
are in general men of the most mediocre talents. They should 
not be opposed in their own way, for they have always more 
noisy words at command than you. In my council there were 
men possessed of much more eloquence than I was, but I always 
defeated them by this simple argument, — two and two make 
four." 

When one of Napoleon's marshals handed to the Emperor a 
book from an upper shelf with the remark, " I am higher than 
you, Sire," — " Longer, not higher," responded Napoleon. 

Bourienne records his love of applause, when returning from 



6 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

parade one day, as follows : " Bourienne," said Napoleon, " do 
you hear those acclamations which still continue ? They are 
as sweet to me as the voice of Josephine." 

Metternich declares he had often heard Napoleon say, "They 
call me lucky because I am able : it is weak men who accuse 
the strong of good fortune." 

From the same source I take the following anecdote : — 

One day at St. Cloud he (Napoleon) had had a dangerous 
fall (he had been thrown out of a carriage on to a great block 
of stone, narrowly escaping severe injury to his stomach). The 
next day, when Metternich inquired how he was, he replied 
very gravely : "I yesterday completed my experiences on the 
power of the will : when I was struck on the stomach I felt my 
life going ; I had only just time to say to myself that I did not 
wish to die, and I live ! Any one else in my place would have 
died." i 

When a friend of Madame de Stael pleaded with Napoleon 
for her return from exile, Napoleon replied : " They pretend 
that she speaks neither of politics nor of me ; but how then 
does it come to pass that all who see her like me less ? " 

A long series of almost uninterrupted successes made Na- 
poleon vain and self-confident ; but the flattery of his followers 
was most excessive, and now appears almost incredible. They 
often said, " God created Napoleon, and rested ! " 



B. 1769. MARSHAL NEY. Executed 1815. 

The fickleness of Marshal Ney and his tragical execution 
have excited some pity. When the command of the troops was 
given to him by Louis XVIII. , upon the Hundred Days' invasion 
by Napoleon, he made a dashing speech to the king, declaring 

1 " The ball that is to hit me," said Napoleon, " has not yet been cast." 
On the morning of the battle at Marengo, Dessaix, one of the bravest of Na- 
poleon's generals, having a presentiment of death, observed to one of his aides- 
de-camp, " It is a long time since I fought in Europe. The bullets won't know 
me again. Something will happen." The curious inference appears to be that 
nothing would happen if the bullets had not forgotten him. 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 7 

that he would " bring back the monster in an iron cage." In- 
stead of this he joined the u monster " at first sight, and for 
this treachery was subsequently shot. 



B. 1808. LOUIS NAPOLEON. D. 1873. 

Louis, sometimes called Napoleon III., or Napoleon the Lit- 
tle, thought he had in him the quality of a great general as 
well as of a great statesman, and was with difficulty dissuaded 
from taking the command of the French army in the Crimean 
war. At Plombieres said he to Count Cavour, " Do you know 
that there are but three men in all Europe ? One is myself, 
the second is you, and the third is one whose name I will not 
mention." Doubtless Bismarck was intended for the third ; 
and Louis was not far wrong, except in the overestimate of 
himself, where, as usual, through rank usurpation he took a 
place to which he had no right. 



B. 1694. VOLTAIRE. D. 1778. 

Yoltaire long reigned supreme as the literary king and wit 
of France ; and when a French translation of Shakespeare 
brought the works of the latter into notice, he exhibited a 
good deal of envy and industrious malice. It was found that 
he had borrowed largely from the English dramatist, and hence 
hated him as much as he did Moses. He tried to enlist in a 
crusade against the great English poet all of his friends, and 
even the French Academy. He was harsh also upon the trans- 
lator. " The blood dances in my veins," said he to Comte 
cl' Argental, July 19, 1776, " as I write to you about him." — " It 
was I who first showed to the French a few pearls that I had 
found in this enormous dungheap. I little expected that I 
should help to tread under foot the crowns of Racine and 
Voltaire in order to adorn the brow of a barbarian player." 

Said Voltaire, " I am tired of hearing it repeated that twelve 



8 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

men were sufficient to found Christianity : I will show the 
world that one is sufficient to destroy it." 

I will only add that he was mistaken, and so were his fol- 
lowers. 

B. 1759. DANTON. D. 1794. 

When Danton was brought to the bloody block to which he 
had aided to bring many others, after casting a look of con- 
tempt at the crowd, he said to the executioner, " Thou wilt 
show my head to the people : it deserves to be seen by them." 



B. 1820. CHAMBORD. 

The Comte de Chambord, in 1873, might have been Henry 
V., King of France, only that he insisted upon his own terms, 
— his Divine right to reign, — proving his Bourbon legitimacy 
of learning nothing and forgetting nothing. Said he, " I am 
the pilot who alone is able to guide the vessel into the port." 
His vanity gave the Republic time to take root, and the Count 
will never wear any other title ; but oh, the difference to him ! 



B. 1802. VICTOR HUGO. 

Victor Hugo, when only fourteen years of age, wrote on the 
10th of July, 1816, in the journal he kept, " I will be Chateau- 
briand, or no one." The next year he competed for the prize 
in poetry offered by the French Academy, and was honorably 
mentioned. If he had not stated his age as fifteen, which was 
not believed, possibly he might have won the prize. 



B. 1803. DUMAS. D. 1870. 

Alexandre Dumas and his son — almost as famous as his 
father — equally bragged about each other. The father called 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 9 

his son " a wonder of nature ; " and the son called his father 
" a prodigy." They felt the most playful and good-humored 
affection for each other : that of the younger being tender and 
demonstrative. " My father," he used to say, " is a great 
child I had when I was little." 



B. 1803. PROSPER MERIMEB. D. 1870. 

Prosper Merimee, in 1853 a Senator of France, remarked to 
a friend, " I felt uneasy when I had to make my first speech 
in the Senate ; but I soon took courage, remembering that I 
was only addressing one hundred and fifty fools." 



B. 1585. RICHELIEU. D. 1642. 

Cardinal Richelieu was said to value himself greatly on his 
personal activity, for his vanity was as universal as his ambi- 
tion. A nobleman of the house of Grammont one day found 
him employed in jumping, and, with the savoir vivre of a 
Frenchman and a courtier, offered to jump against him. He 
suffered the Cardinal to jump higher, and soon found himself 
rewarded by an appointment. 



PIERRE DE CORBIAC. 

Pierre de Corbiac, a poet among the troubadours of the 
South of France about the thirteenth century, wrote thus of 
himself : — 

" I am rich in mind ; and though I have no great inherit- 
ance, castles, hamlets, and other domains, — although I have 
neither gold, silver, nor silk, no other wealth than my own 
person, — I am nevertheless not poor. I am even richer than 
a man who has a thousand golden marks. I was born at 
Corbiac, where I have relatives and friends. My income is 
moderate, but my courtesy and my intelligence make me live 

2 



10 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 

respected by gentlefolks. I walk with my head erect, like a 
rich man ; and, indeed, I am one, as I have collected a treasure 
(knowledge)." 

B. 1768. CHATEAUBRIAND. D. 1848. 

Chateaubriand was felt to be dangerous by Napoleon, and 
was therefore imprisoned for several years. Speaking of this 
fact, Chateaubriand says : " The genius of my former great- 
ness and of my glory, represented by a life of thirty years, did 
not make its appearance before me ; but my Muse of former 
days, poor and humble as she was, came all radiant to embrace 
me through my window. She was delighted with my abode, 
and full of inspiration." 

Again he says, " May I be permitted to mention myself as 
an instance ? " And in the next paragraph he parades him- 
self in the plural " we," saying : " We no longer blush to 
confess our own merits, and to proclaim all the gifts which 
bountiful nature has bestowed upon us. Hear us speak of our- 
selves : We have the kindness to take upon ourselves all the 
expense of the praises which people were preparing to give us ; 
we charitably enlighten the reader respecting our merits ; we 
teach him to relish our beauties ; we soothe his enthusiasm ; 
we seek his admiration at the bottom of his heart ; we spare 
his delicacy the task of discovering it to us himself. 

" Every one of us, in his conscience and most sincerely, 
believes himself to be the man of our age ; the man who has 
opened a new career ; the man who has eclipsed the past ; the 
man in whose presence all reputations dwindle to nothing ; 
the man who will survive and alone survive ; the man of pos- 
terity, the man of the renovation of things, the man of the 
future. 

u We modern great men count upon filling the world with 
our renown ; but, do what we may, it will scarcely pass the 
limits where our language expires. 

" In me commenced, with the school called Romantic, a 
revolution in French literature." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 11 

He is very fond of comparing himself with Byron, though 
his poetry is no longer read even by Frenchmen, and runs a 
parallel thus : " He was a boy ; I was young, and as unknown 
as he. I was destined to precede him in the career of letters, 
and to remain in it after him. He had been brought up on 
the heaths of Scotland, on the seashore, as I had been on the 
heaths of Brittany, on the seashore. He was at first fond of 
the Bible and Ossian, as I was fond of them. He sang in 
Newstead Abbey the recollections of childhood, as I sang them 
in the Castle of St. Malo." 

Here is a confession evidently heartfelt : " What is more 
delicious than admiration ? " 

"Lord Byron will live, whether as a child of his age, like 
me, he has expressed like me, and like Goethe before us both, 
passion and wretchedness ; and whether my peregrinations 
and the poop-lantern of my Gallic bark have pointed out the 
track to the vessel of Albion upon unexplored seas." 

He imagined that Byron had somehow copied his heroes 
from him, and was irritated because Byron had never made 
the slightest reference to any of his voluminous works. 
" Could he," said he, " have had the weakness never to men- 
tion me ? Am I, then, one of those fathers whom one denies 
when one has arrived at power ? Is it possible that I Can have 
been wholly unknown to Lord Byron, though he quotes almost 
all the French authors his contemporaries ? " 

Of Mirabeau Chateaubriand relates that when a young man 
he met and sat next to him at dinner, where the conversa- 
tion turned upon the subject of Mirabeau's enemies. Being 
a young man, he had not uttered a word ; but Mirabeau, he 
says, " looked me full in the face with his eyes of wickedness 
and genius, and, laying his broad hand on my shoulder, said, 
' They w r ill never forgive me my superiority.' " 

Chateaubriand in 1807 spent six weeks at Tunis, and de- 
voted but a half of an hour to the ruins of Carthage. Previously 
he had resided several days at Cairo without visiting the 
Pyramids ; but this did not leave him without ambition to 
have his name carved on their lofty and enduring summits. 
" Je chargea M. CatTe," he says, " d'ecrire mon nom sur ces 



12 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

grands tombeaux, selon l'usage a la premiere occasion : 

l'on doit remplir tous les petits devoirs d'un pieux voya- 
geur." 



B. 1805. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. D. 1855. 

In the Preface to the " Ancien Regime," the author rather 
modestly writes : — 

" I may say, I think, without undue self-laudation, that this 
book is the fruit of great labor. I could point to more than 
one short chapter that has cost me over a year's work. I 
could have' loaded my pages with foot-notes ; but I have pre- 
ferred inserting a few only, and placing them at the end of the 
volume, with a reference to the pages to which they apply." 



Prof. JOHN WALKER VILANT MACBETH. 

The mule undoubtedly, if it thinks at all, thinks itself supe- 
rior to the horse or the ass, and reckons that it possesses the 
merits of both races without their drawbacks. It has both 
long life and long ears. Here is a specimen in Prof. John 
Walker Yilant Macbeth, who published his " Might and Mirth 
of Literature " in 1875. On page 51 he says : " Admire with 
intense enjoyment the ivory finish, the fairy-like, delicate 
polish and vocalization of the lines we refer to. Your gather- 
ing of a hundred of them will of itself entitle you to be named 
as a person of exquisite taste ; while you will have in your 
possession a pellucid fountain of enjoyment the most refined." 
He then gives no more than a line each of Byron, Tennyson, 
Wordsworth, Milton, and Chaucer, and eight lines of his own. 
Here is one of them : — 

" He thought as a sage, yet he felt as a man." 

And that is all we shall want, I think, from this " pellucid 
fountain." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 13 



B. 356 b. c. ALEXANDER THE GREAT. D. 323 b. c. 

" Go," said Alexander the Great to his soldiers, when they 
refused to follow him to the Indus, — " go tell your country- 
men that you left Alexander completing the conquest of the 
world." 



THE CZAR OF RUSSIA. 

The Czar of Russia once made war upon Sweden because 
he was not treated with sufficient honors when he passed 
through the country in disguise. 



B. a.d. 12. PAUL, THE APOSTLE. D.a.d.67. 

Among the great men of a great period, no one is entitled to 
higher rank in the time of Christ's apostles than Paul, or Saul 
of Tarsus. He boldly told his brethren what he was, what he 
had suffered, and what he had done ; little thinking, perhaps, 
that he was yet to suffer death at the hands of Nero, perhaps 
the worst of Roman tyrants. The pre-eminence of Paul as 
the most eloquent preacher of the gospel and as the most 
learned and fertile expounder of the great doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, was no doubt as apparent to Christians eighteen hun- 
dred years ago as it is to-day ; and was admitted by Peter, 
though he had been once rebuked by Paul face to face. Paul 
could therefore truthfully say that he had " labored more 
abundantly than they all," notwithstanding his person was 
small and deformed, or, as he said himself, " nothing." To 
the Corinthians he frankly stated, " I am become a fool in 
glorying ; ye have compelled me ; for I ought to have been 
commended of you ; for in nothing am I behind the very 
chiefest apostles, though I be nothing." 



14 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1471. CARDINAL WOLSEY. D. 1530. 

Cardinal Wolsey's famous insolence, Ego et rex meus, — 
"I and my king," — he apologized for by observing that it was 
conformable to the Latin idiom, and that the Roman always 
placed himself before the person of whom he spoke. 

Shakespeare makes a fine use of the rise and fall of this 
Tiistoric character in one of his plays ; and Johnson, in his 
" Vanity of Human Wishes," gives a full-length picture, com- 
mencing with the words : — 

" In full-blown dignity, see Wolsey stand, 
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand." 



; B. 1533. QUEEN ELIZABETH. D. 1602. 

When the Lord Keeper, with others, came to the Queen, 
just before her death, to inquire, in the name of the Council, 
her pleasure as to who should succeed, she thus replied : — 

" I told you my seat had been the seat of kings, and I will 
have no rascal to succeed me. And who should succeed me 
but a king ? " 

The Lords asking what she meant by these words, she an- 
swered that her meaning was that a king should succeed ; 
" and who should that be but our cousin of Scotland ? " 



B. 1561. FRANCIS BACON. D. 1626. 

Bacon in all his early life was a sturdy beggar for office ; 
and there was too much of truth in Pope's characterization 
when he wrote him down forever as " the wisest, meanest of 
mankind." While he was still young he told his uncle that 
he had " taken all knowledge for his province." When old, 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 15 

and after his fell, still ambitious to give advice to great men, 
he wrote to Buckingham as follows : — 

" But when I look abroad and see the times so stirring, and 
so much dissimulation, falsehood, baseness, and envy in the 
world, and so many idle clocks going in men's heads ; then 
it grieveth me much that I mought give you some of the fruits 
of the careful advice, modest liberty, and true information of 
a friend that loveth your lordship as I do." 

The theory of unconscious genius in its grandest develop- 
ments cannot be sustained by anything in the history of Bacon. 
In spite of his disgrace, he was confident of his intellectual 
merits to the last, and died, as he himself said, leaving " his 
name and memory to foreign nations, and to mine own coun- 
trymen after some time is passed over." 

Referring to his remarkable Essays, Bacon was not uncon- 
scious of his power, or of the lustre and reputation these 
recreations of his other studies would yield to his name. 

Again he says : " He that plots to be a figure among ciphers 
is the decay of a whole age." 

When Bacon became Attorney-General, he addressed a tract 
to King James, professing his willingness to resume his labors 
upon the subject of u A Proposal for Amending the Laws of 
England," and wrote with intense consciousness of his own 
great ability : — 

" I do assure your Majesty, and am in good hope that when 
Sir Edward Coke's reports and my rules and decisions shall 
come to posterity, there will be, whatsoever is now thought, 
(no) question who was the greater lawyer." 

Bacon comforted himself for his lack of offspring by recol- 
lecting the instances from which he drew his saying, " Great 
men have no continuance." 

Bacon says that " Socrates, Aristotle, and Galen were 
men full of ostentation ; " and that " the vanity of Cicero and 
Seneca, like the varnish of ceilings, made them to shine and 
to last." 



16 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1711. DAVID HUME. D. 1776. 

Hume, whose education was mainly self-acquired from books, 
early set his affections on literary distinction ; and his style of 
writing, as exhibited in his Essays and his History, is nearly 
faultless. His ruling passion was — 

" What shall I do to be forever known, 
And make the age to come mine own 1 " 

After he was elected to a librarianship in Edinburgh, he 
appeared much elated with the glory of his success ; and to his 
friend Dr. Clephane, to whom he had recently sent a copy of 
his u Inquiry concerning Human Understanding," writes a 
letter, from which I take the following extract : — 

" I cast a favorable regard on you, and earnestly desire your 
friendship and good-will ; a little flattery, too, from so eminent 
a hand would be very acceptable to me. You know you are 
somewhat in my debt in that particular. The present I made 
you of my Inquiry was calculated both as a mark of my regard 
and as a snare to catch a little incense from you. Why do 
you put me to the necessity of giving it to myself? " 

In his Autobiography Hume observes : " It is difficult for a 
man to speak long of himself without vanity ; therefore I shall 
be short. It may be an instance of vanity that I pretend at 
all to write my Life. The first success of most of my writings 
was not such as to be an object of vanity." 

Then, after giving credit to several points in his character 
and no more than he was entitled to, he adds, " I cannot say 
there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, 
but I hope it is not a misplaced one." 

Dr. Adam Smith relates how Hume diverted himself, a short 
time before his death, by inventing jocular excuses he might 
make to Charon, and Charon's surly answers in return. " I 
thought I might say to him, c Good Charon, I have been cor- 
recting my works for a new edition ; allow me a little time to 
see how the public receive the alterations.' But Charon would 
answer, ' Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering 
rogue! ' " 



\s 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 17 



B. 1737. GIBBON. D. 1794. 

In the " Autobiography " of Gibbon he says : — 

" The old reproach, that no British altars had been raised 
to the Muse of History, was recently disproved by the first per- 
formances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland 
and of the Stuarts. I will assume the presumption of saying 
that I was not unworthy to read them ; nor will I disguise my 
different feelings in the repeated perusals. The perfect com- 
position, the nervous language, the well-turned periods of Dr. 
Robertson inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one 
day tread in his footsteps : the calm philosophy, the careless, 
inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often forced me 
to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and 
despair. 

" Yet, upon the whole, the ' History of the Decline and Fall ' 
seems to have struck root, both at home and abroad, and 
may perhaps a hundred years hence still continue to be 
abused. 

" I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work 
without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impres- 
sion was exhausted in a few days ; a second and third edition 
were scarcely adequate to the demand ; and the bookseller's 
property was twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin. My book 
was on every table, and almost on every toilette ; the historian 
was crowned by taste or fashion of the day ; nor was the gen- 
eral voice disturbed by the barking of any profane critic. If I 
listened to the music of praise, I was more seriously satisfied 
with the approbation of my judges. The candor of Dr. Robert- 
son embraced his disciple. A letter from Mr. Hume overpaid 
the labor of ten years ; but I have never presumed to accept 
a place in the triumvirate of British historians." 

When he had completed his great work at Lausanne, he 
took a walk by moonlight, in the silent midnight, and reflected 
upon the idea that he had taken an everlasting leave of an 
old and agreeable companion, and writes that, " whatsoever 
might be the future date of my history, the life of the historian 

3 



18 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

must te short and precarious. I will add two facts which 
have seldom occurred in the composition of six or even five 
quartos. 

" 1. My first rough manuscript, without any intermediate 
copy, has been sent to the press. 

" 2. Not a sheet has been seen by any human eyes, except- 
ing those of the author and the printer : the faults and the 
merits are exclusively my own. 

" When I contemplate the common lot of mortality, I must 
acknowledge that I have drawn a high prize' in the lottery 
of life." 

Gibbon happened to be present when Sheridan made his 
great speech in Westminster Hall at the trial of Warren 
Hastings ; and the orator, noticing his presence, adroitly 
brought his name into the speech, and said : — 

u The facts that made up the volume of narrative were 
unparalleled in atrociousness, and that nothing equal in crim- 
inality was to be traced, either in ancient or modern history, 
in the correct periods of Tacitus or the luminous 1 page of 
Gibbon." 

It is needless to say that Gibbon was more than pleased, 
and he does not fail to record the compliment : " It is not my 
province to absolve or condemn the Governor of India ; but 
Mr. Sheridan's eloquence demanded my applause ; nor could I 
hear without emotion the personal compliment which he paid 
me in the presence of the British nation." 

In his " Autobiography " Gibbon declares : "I can derive 
from my ancestors neither glory nor shame. Yet a sincere 
and simple narrative of my own life may amuse my leisure 
hours ; but it will subject me, and perhaps with justice, to the 
imputation of vanity." 

After making references to the lives of the Younger Pliny, 
Petrarch, and Erasmus, to the Essays of Montaigne and to Sir 

1 This was in June, 1788 ; and, after he had finished, one of his friends 
reproached him with flattering Gibbon. " Why, what did I say of him 1 " 
asked Sheridan. " You called him the luminous author." " Luminous ! Oh ! 
1 meant voluminous." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 19 

William Temple, to the Confessions of Rousseau and other 
notable memoirs, he concludes thus : — 

" That I am equal or superior to some of these, the effects 
of modesty or affectation cannot force me to dissemble." 



B. 1697. SAVAGE. D. 1743. 

In Dr. Johnson's remarkable Life of Savage, he observes : 
" Vanity, the most innocent species of pride, was most fre- 
quently predominant : he could not easily leave off when he 
had once begun to mention himself or his works ; nor ever 
read his verses without stealing his eyes from the page, to dis- 
cover in the faces of his audience how they were affected with 
any favorite passage." 



B. 1650. JOHN CHURCHILL. D. 1722. 

(Duke of Marlborough.) 

Marlborough, when from his eyes " the streams of dotage " 
began to flow, as he passed before a mirror, exclaimed, "■ That 
was once a man." 



B. 1564. SHAKESPEARE. D. 1616. 

Shakespeare wrote with perhaps the least personal reflection 
of himself, of all men ; and it is difficult to find, from any 
hint in all his wondrous productions, that he had any expecta- 
tion, or even desire, to be known by posterity. There are 
words, however, that he puts in the mouth of the King in 
" Henry VIII." which show that he had, at least, some thought 
about the fame of his heroes after death. They are these : — 

" After my death I wish no other herald, 
No other speaker of my living actions, 
To keep mine honor from corruption, 
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith." 



20 SELF-CONSCTOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

It is claimed that in bis Fifty-fifth Sonnet, if anywhere, his 
ambition for posthumous fame crops out ; but this is doubtful. 
It is all in two lines : — 

"Not marble, not the gilded monuments 

. Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme." 

Spenser was much more explicit in proclaiming his verse to be 
an " immortal monument." 

Even Shakespeare's plays were rescued from oblivion by 
others, not by himself, as he appears to have sought neither 
a revision nor the preservation of any part of his works. He 
retired to Stratford-upon-Avon with a moderate competence, 
willed to his wife his " second-best " bed, wholly unmindful of 
the great legacy he had left to mankind. Hamlet says : — 

" Oh heavens ! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet ? 
then there is hope a great man's memory may outlive his life 
half a year ; but, by 'r Lady ! he must build churches then, or 
else he suffer not thinking on ! " 

And Shakespeare puts into the mouth of one of the conspira- 
tors against Caesar these words: — 

" The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings." 



B. 1573. BEN JONSON. D. 1637. 

Ben Jonson, it is said, wrote best when he was drunk ; and 
there is some evidence in his journal that he thought so, when 
he entered the following : " Memorandum. Upon the 20th 
of May, the king (Heaven reward him !) sent me £100. At 
that time I often went to the Devil Tavern ; and before I had 
spent £4:0 of it, wrote my ' Alchymist.' I laid the plot of my 
' Volpone ' and wrote most of it after a present of ten dozen 

of palmsack from my good Lord T . That I am positive 

will live to posterity, and be acted, when I and envy be friends, 
with applause." " Memorandum. The first speech in my 
4 Cattilina,' spoken by Scylla's ghost, was writ after I had 
parted with my friend at the Devil Tavern : I had drunk well 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 21 

that night, and had brave notions. There is one scene in that 
play which I think flat. I resolve to drink no more water in 
my wine." 

B. 1608. MILTON. D. 1674. 

When we remember that Milton obtained only ten pounds 
for his " Paradise Lost," while Hoyle obtained two hundred for 
his work on Whist, it is not easy to see any foundation for 
vanity, even if his song should "a fit audience find, though 
few," as he expected ; but it is very plain that the greatest of 
English poets was not unconscious of his lofty merits. After 
saying that he was 

" Not sedulous by nature to incite 
Wars, hitherto the only argument 
Heroic deemed," 

he adds, — 

" Me of these 
Nor skilled, nor studious higher argument 
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise 
That name, unless an age too late, or cold 
Climate, or years damp my intended wing 
Depressed, and much they may, if all be mine, 
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear." 

When but thirty-three years of age, Milton appears to have 
had a sublime confidence in his power to produce both prose 
and verse of exceptional merit, and may have had in his mind 
some vague idea of his great work — in his mother tongue — 
" Paradise Lost," brought forth long after, and when he was 
wholly bereft of eyesight. " I must say, therefore," and I 
quote his words, " that after I had for my first years, by the 
ceaseless diligence and care of my father (whom God recom- 
pense !) been exercised to the tongues, and some sciences, 
as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both 
at home and at the schools, it was found that, whether aught 
was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken 
to of my own choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or 
versing, but chiefly this latter, the style, by certain vital signs 
it had, was likely to live" 



2JZ SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

Then, after referring to "encomiums" he had received in 
Italy, " which the Italian is not forward to bestow upon men 
of this side of the Alps," he says, "I began thus far to assert 
both to them and divers of my friends here, at home, and not 
less to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, 
that by labor and intense study, (which I take to be my por- 
tion in this life,) joined with the strong propensity of nature, 
I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as 
they should not willingly let it die" He was right; the 
world will "not willingly let it die." 

Of his youth he says : — 

" For seven years I studied the learning and arts wont to be 
taught, far from all vice, and approved of all good men, even 
till having taken what they call the master's degree, and that 
with praise." 



B. 1631. DRYDEN. B. 1700. 

Dryden, beyond doubt a great and masculine poet, thought 
his twenty-eight plays superior to Shakespeare's, and that he 
could improve the " Tempest," as well as Milton's " Paradise 
Lost." The author of " Absalom and Achitophel " takes a 
higher seat than a numerous crowd of poets ; but the public 
judgment still places him below those whose works he indicated 
he could mend. He thought it better to acknowledge his van- 
ity than to leave the world to do it for him, so he writes : " For 
what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a 
study ? Why am I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as 
fame ? The same parts and application which have made me 
a poet might have raised me to any honors of the gown." 

He thought his merits greatly undervalued, and declared 
that he had "few thanks to pay his stars that he was born 
among Englishmen." In reference to one of his (28) poems, 
"The Year of Wonders," he says: "I am satisfied that as 
the Prince and General" (Rupert and Monk) "are incom- 
parably the best subjects I have ever had, so what I have 
written on them is much better than what I have performed 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 23 

on any other. As I have endeavored to adorn my poem with 
noble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with 
elocution." 

In the preface to the " Second Miscellany," Dryden says, 
"I have taken some pains to make it my masterpiece in 
English." 

Swift writes of Dryden : — 

" He has often said to me in confidence, that the world 
would never have suspected him to be so great a poet, if he 
had not assured them so frequently in his prefaces, that it was 
impossible they could either doubt or forget it." 

And his great-grandfather is reported to have made this 
self-confident statement in his will, that he was " assured by 
the Holy Ghost that he was the elect of God." 



B. 1688. POPE. D. 1744. 

Perhaps no poet was ever more anxious to perpetuate his 
fame than Pope ; and he began early and worked late. 

" While still a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." 

The complacency with which Pope accepted the admiration 
of his friends, is very fine and sweet : — 

" But why then publish ? Granville the polite, 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write, 
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise, 
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays : 
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read, 
Even mitred Rochester would nod the head; 
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before), 
Received with open arms one poet more. 
Happy my studies, if by these approved ! 
Happier their author, if by these beloved ! 
From these the world will judge of men and books, 
Not from Burnet's, Old-mixons and Cook's." 



24 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

Sir Thomas Browne says, that " King Philip did not detract 
from the nation when lie said he sent his Armada to fight with 
men, and not to combat with the winds." 

" The success of that petty province of Holland (of which 
the Grand Seigneur proudly said, if they should trouble him, 
as they did the Spaniard, he would send his men with shovels 
and pickaxes and throw it into the sea) I cannot altogether 
ascribe to the ingenuity and industry of the people, but to the 
mercy of God." 

" Men are like ships, the more they contain, the lower they 
carry their head." 



B. 1617. SIR PETER LELY. D. 1680. 

Sir Peter Lely was a portrait-painter of very great merit, but 
modest when estimating himself. " Sir Peter," said one of the 
frequenters of the court of Charles II., "how did you get 
your reputation ? You know you are no great painter." " I 
know I am not," said Lely, calmly, " but I am the best you 
have." 

B. 1697. HOGARTH. D. 1764. 

Hogarth's reputation mainly rests on his success as a satirist, 
or comic painter ; but he thought very highly of his portraits, 
and boasted that " he could paint equal to Vandyke, give him 
his time, and let him choose his subject." This only places 
him in the same category with Milton, who esteemed " Paradise 
Regained " superior to u Paradise Lost." But does not the 
owner of a pair of horses often praise the poorest most ? The 
weakest child is most caressed by the mother. 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 25 



B. 1621. LORD SHAFTESBURY. D. 1683. 

When Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury (in the reign of Charles 
II.) went to sit to the painter Varelst, and was received by him 
with his hat on, — "Don't you know me?" said the peer. 
" Yes," replied the painter, " you are my Lord Chancellor. 
And do you know me ? I am Varelst. The king can make 
any man Chancellor, but he can make nobody a Varelst." 
Shaftesbury was disgusted, and employed another painter. 



B. 1667. SWIFT. D. 1745. 

In one of his letters to Bolingbroke, Swift writes: — 
" All my endeavors to distinguish myself were only for want 
of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by 
those who have an opinion of my parts ; whether right or wrong 
is no great matter. And so the reputation of wit and great 
learning does the office of a blue riband or coach and six." 

After he became, as Johnson writes, " a driveller and a 
show," laying his hand one day upon the " Tale of a Tub," he 
closed it with a deep whisper, " What a genius I had when I 
wrote that book ! " 

B. 1684. EDWARD YOUNG. D. 1766. 

"And what so foolish as the chase of Fame ? 
How vain the prize, how impotent our aim ! 
For what are men who grasp at praise sublime, 
But bubbles on the rapid stream of Time, 
That rise and fall, and swell, and are no more, 
Born and forgot, ten thousand in an hour ! 
Should this verse live, Lumley ! may it be 
A monument of gratitude to thee : 
Whose early favor I must own with shame, 
So long my patron, and so late my theme." 

[From "Love of Fame the Universal Passion." Satire II. J 
4 



26 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1713. LAURENCE STERNE. D. 1768. 

Laurence Sterne, the Beecher of his day, discloses too much 
of his own character in his " Sentimental Journey," but his 
egotism is even more offensive in some of his letters to the wife 
of Daniel Draper, Esq., then in England, while her husband 
was in India. He writes to her over the signature of " The 
Bramin," much like a rogue, and eagerly proclaims himself a 
wit. He writes : u And indeed I begin to think you have as 
many virtues as my Uncle Toby's widow. Talking of widows, 
— pray, Eliza, if you ever are such, do not think of giving 
yourself to some wealthy nabob, because I design to marry you 
myself. My wife cannot live long, and I know not the woman 
I should so well like for her substitute as yourself. 'T is true 
I am ninety-five in constitution, and you but twenty-five ; but 
what I want in youth I will make up in wit and good humor. 
Not Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller 
his Saccharissa. Tell me in answer to this that you approve 
and honor the proposal." 

And this wretched old fool was the next day writing a love- 
letter to Lady P , and complaining that she had made him 

miserable ! 



B. 1703. JOHN WESLEY. D. 1791. 

The distinguished preacher, Wesley, published a dictionary, 
— after Bailey and prior to Johnson. It was a very modest 
duodecimo in size, and of one hundred pages only ; and yefc 
Mr. Wesley speaks of it in the preface in rather a large way. 
" The author assures you," so he writes, " he thinks this the 
best English dictionary in the world." Then he adds, " Many 
are the mistakes in all other English dictionaries which I have 
yet seen, whereas I can truly say I know of none in this." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 27 



B. 1707. HENRY FIELDING. D. 1754. 

In that celebrated romance of "Torn Jones," Fielding gives 
forth this sentiment : " Come, bright love of fame, fill my 
ravished fancy with the hopes of charming ages yet to come ! 
Foretell me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet 
unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, 
she reads the real worth which existed in my Charlotte, shall 
from her sympathetic breast send forth the heaving sigh ! Do 
thou teach me not only to foresee, but to enjoy, nay, even to 
feed on future praise ! Comfort me by the solemn assurance 
that, when the little parlor in which I sit at this moment shall 
be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honor 
by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall never 
know nor see ! " 



B. 1752. CHATTERTON. D. 1770. 

The boy-poet, Chatterton, whose fate always touches me with 
grief, begged of a painter to paint him " an angel with wings 
and a trumpet, to trumpet his name over the world." 



B. 1751. SHERIDAN. D. 1816. 

It must be borne in mind that profanity one hundred years 
ago was far from being held at its true value, or, as it is now 
held, not only the wickedest, but the most vulgar and indecent 
kind of slang; and when Sheridan failed in his first speech, 
he exclaimed, " I have it in me, and, by God, it shall come 
out ! " 

B. 1793. MACREADY. D. 1873. 

The egotism of Macready, as appears from his published 
" Diary " of 1843, was a trifle large : — 



28 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

" Oct. 23. Acted Macbeth equal, if not superior, as a whole, 
to any performance I have ever given of the character. I 
should say it was a noble piece of art. Called for warmly, and 
warmly received. The Miss Cushman who acted Lady Mac- 
beth interested me much. She has to learn her art, but she 
showed mind and sympathy with me, — a novelty so refresh- 
ing to me on the stage." 



B. 1730. BURKE. D. 1797. 

The appearance of Mr. Burke's book of u Reflections on the 
Revolution in France " severed his relations from Mr. Fox and 
the Whig party, and caused the retirement of the greatest man 
of his age from Parliament. He defended himself with great 
vigor and with some sarcasm, but always with studied modesty. 
The following is a specimen from his " Appeal from the New 
to the Old Whigs " : — 

" The gentlemen who, in the name of the party, have passed 
sentence on Mr. Burke's book in the light of literary criticism, 
are judges above all challenge. He did not indeed flatter him- 
self that, as a writer, he could claim the approbation of men 
whose talents, in his judgment and in the public judgment, ap- 
proach to prodigies ; if ever such persons should be disposed to 
estimate the merit of a composition upon the standard of their 
own ability. 

" In their critical censure, though Mr. Burke may find him- 
self humbled by it as a writer, as a man and as an Englishman 
he finds matter not only of consolation, but of pride." 



B. 1754. ROBERT BURNS. D. 1796. 

Burns, not without reason, thought his noble ode, " Brace's 
Address to his Troops at Bannockburn," to be in his " best man- 
ner," and so thought Mrs. Dunlop, who belonged to the Wallace 
family. One of the finest letters of Burns to this lady discloses 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 29 

how sweet to the poet was her praise. Woman's praise is 
always sweet. He writes : — 

"I am truly sorry I was not at home yesterday, when I was 
so much honored with your order for my copies, and incom- 
parably more by the handsome compliments you are pleased to 
pay my poetic abilities. I am fully persuaded that there is not 
any class of mankind so feelingly alive to the titillations of ap- 
plause as the sons of Parnassus ; nor is it easy to conceive how 
the heart of the poor bard dances with rapture when those 
whose character in life gives them a right to be polite judges 
honor him with their approbation. Had you been thoroughly 
acquainted with me, madam, you could not have touched my 
darling heart-chord more sweetly than by noticing my at- 
tempts to celebrate your illustrious ancestor, the savior of his 
country." 

B. 1747. PARR. D. 1825. 

B. 1750. ERSKLNE. D. 1823. 

Dr. Parr and Erskine were equally vain and conceited, though 
the merits of the first as a writer, the last as a speaker, cannot 
be denied ; and when they met, paid each other most extrava- 
gant compliments. On one of these occasions Dr. Parr prom- 
ised that he would write Erskine's epitaph, to which Erskine 
replied, that " such an intention on the Doctor's part was almost 
a temptation to commit suicide." 



B. 1812. DICKENS. D. 1870. 

From a letter of Dickens to Macready, dated at Baltimore, 
March 22, 1842, I give the following extract : — 

" Macready, if I had been born here and had written my 
book in this country, producing no stamps of approval from 
any other land, it is my solemn belief that I should have lived 
and died poor, unnoticed, and a black sheep to boot. I never 
was more convinced of anything than of that." 



30 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

At twelve years of age he was placed with a relative engaged 
in making Warren's Blacking. It is clear he thought his father 
might have done better by him, and writes about it thus : — 

" It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the 
poor little drudge I have been since we came to London, no one 
had compassion enough on me — a child of singular abilities, 
quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally — to 
suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it 
might have been, to place me at any common school. 

" My whole nature was so penetrated with grief and humili- 
ation of such considerations, that even now, famous and caressed 
and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife 
and children, — even that I am a man, — and wander desolately 
back to that time of my life." 

When writing the fifteenth number of the " Pickwick Pa- 
pers," he wrote to a friend : " I am getting on, thank Heaven, 
like a house o' fire, and think the next Pickwick will bang all 
the others." 

It may be observed that most authors are apt to esteem their 
last work as their very best, and praise does not seem to have 
been unacceptable to Dickens, as appears from a reply he made 
to Lord Lytton, as follows : — 

" I received your letter in praise of 4 Dr. Marigold,' and 
read and re-read all your generous words, fifty times over, with 
inexpressible delight. I cannot tell you how they gratified and 
affected me." 



B. 1774. ROBERT SOUTHEY. D. 1843. 

Southey kept upon the anvil his poem of " Madoc " for many 
years, rewriting and correcting it many times ; but it sold very 
slowly, and all he realized from it was twenty-five pounds. He 
was not, however, discouraged, and said, " I shall be read by 
posterity, if I am not read now ; read with Milton and Virgil 
and Dante, when poets whose works are now selling by thou- 
sands are only known through a bibliographical dictionary." 

Once when Southey was proceeding in this strain, as usual 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 31 

extolling the merits of his productions, the noted wit, Mr. Por- 
son, observed, " I will tell you, sir, what I think of your poeti- 
cal works : they will be read when Shakespeare's and Milton's 
are forgotten," — adding, after a pause, " but not till then." 

The " Life of Nelson," by Robert Southey, is reckoned among 
the best biographies extant, and among the great mass of his 
other works there is much that is still read with interest ; but 
the exalted opinion entertained by the author of these works 
has not been confirmed by posterity. Here are some specimens 
of his estimate of himself : — 

" 1800. < Thalaba ' is finished. You will, I trust, find the 
Paradise a rich poetical picture, a proof that I can employ 
magnificence and luxury of language when I think them in 
place. One overwhelming propensity has formed my destiny, 
and marred all prospects of rank or wealth ; but it has made 
me happy, and it will make me immortal." 

" ' Thalaba ' is a whole and unembarrassed story. I know no 
poem which can claim a place between it and the ' Orlando.' 
Let it be weighed with the i Oberon ; ' perhaps, were I to speak 
out, I should not dread a trial with Ariosto. My proportion 
of ore to dross is greater." 

At a later date he predicted that, as a historian, he should 
rank above Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon; and, as if that 
were not bold enough, even wrote : — 

" I have always flattered myself that my ' History of Brazil ' 
might, in more points than one, be compared with Herodotus, 
and will hereafter stand in the same relation to the history of 
that large portion of the new world, as his work does to that 
of the old." 

After this no Englishman should laugh at the egotistical 
extravagances of Chateaubriand or Lamartine. 



B. 1648. SIR GODFREY KNELLER. D. 1723. 

Sir Godfrey Kneller, who painted the female beauties at 
Hampton Court in the time of Charles II., to the great disgust 
of all those not included, was a good artist as well as a wit, 



32 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 

but prodigiously vain. He was greatly flattered by the poets ; 
and Pope laid a wager there was no flattery so gross that his 
friend would not swallow. To prove it Pope said to him one 
day as he was painting, " Sir Godfrey, I believe if God Almighty 
had had your assistance the world would have been formed 
more perfect." " 'Fore God, sir," replied Kneller, " I believe 
so." In the same impious strain lie said to a low fellow whom 
he overheard cursing himself, " God damn you ! God may 
damn the Duke of Marlborough, and perhaps Sir Godfrey 
Kneller ; but do you think lie will take the trouble of damning 
such a scoundrel as you ? " 

At another time Pope was with Sir Godfrey, both physically 
very inferior men, when Sir Godfrey's nephew, a Guinea trader, 
came in. " Nephew," said Sir Godfrey, " you have the honor 
of seeing the two greatest men in the world." " I don't know 
how great you may be," said the Guinea trader, " but I don't 
like your looks : I have often bought a man much better than 
both of you together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas." 



B. 1709. Dr. SAMUEL JOHNSON. D. 1784. 

A gentleman once observed to Dr. Johnson that he excelled 
his competitors in writing biography. " Sir," was the com- 
placent reply, " I believe that is true. The dogs don't know 
how to write trifles with dignity." 

On another occasion he said : " My other works are wine 
and water; but my 'Rambler ' is pure wine." The world, how- 
ever, does not agree with this estimate, any more than with 
Milton about the merits of " Paradise Regained." 

Johnson, in the last year of his life, was one evening in fine 
spirits at the " Essex Head " Club, and called out with a sudden 
air of exultation, " Oh, gentlemen, I must tell you a very great 
thing. The Empress of Russia has ordered the 4 Rambler ' 
to be translated into the Russian language ; so I shall be read 
on the banks of the Wolga. Horace boasts that his fame 
would extend as far as the banks of the Rhone : now the 
Wolga is further from me than the Rhone was from Horace." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 33 

Dr. Johnson, speaking of his own " London," the copyright 
of which noble poem he sold for ten guineas, said that he 
might perhaps have been content with less ; " but Paul White- 
head had a little before got ten guineas for a poem, and I 
would not take less than Paul Whitehead." 

In the year 1775 Sir Joshua Reynolds painted the portrait 
of Johnson, in which he was represented as reading, and near- 
sighted. The expression of this peculiarity so much displeased 
the Doctor that he remarked, " It is not friendly to hand down 
to posterity the imperfections of any man." Alluding to this 
picture, Mrs. Thrale says, " I observed that he would not be 
known by posterity for his defects only, let Sir Joshua do his 
worst ;" and then referred to Reynolds's own portrait (painted 
for Mrs. Thrale), where he had introduced the ear-trumpet. 
To which the Doctor answered, " He may paint himself as deaf 
as he chooses, but I will not be blinking Sam." 

A lady of Johnson's acquaintance once asked him how it 
happened that he was never invited to dine at the tables of the 
great ; to which he replied, " Because, madam, great lords and 
ladies do not like to have their mouths stopped." 



B. 1723. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. D. 1792. 

Sir Joshua Reynolds was not accounted a vain man, and 
yet he is reported to have purchased a very odd and showy 
carriage soon after lie took his house in Leicester Fields, and 
requested his sister to ride about in it, in order that people 
might ask whose it was, when the answer would be, " It 
belongs to the great painter." 



B. 1728. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. D. 1774. 

Goldsmith is perhaps most loved as an author, by the Eng- 
lish-speaking race, of all those who flourished in his day. 
Certainly he wrote " no line which, dying, he could wish to 
blot ; " and it seems almost cruel to perpetuate any of his 

5 



34 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

deficiencies or excesses. His " Yicar of Wakefield " and most 
of his poetical works have long been accepted as no mean part 
among English classics ; but in relation to his work on Natural 
History, his excellent friend Dr. Johnson observed, u Gold- 
smith, sir, will give us a fine book upon the subject ; but if he 
can distinguish a cow from a horse, that I believe may be the 
extent of his knowledge of natural history." On the whole, 
the work was a creditable compilation, though he told us that 
" the cow sheds her horns 3 every two years." 

He was jealous even of beauty in the other sex. When the 
people of Amsterdam gathered round the balcony to look at the 
Miss Hornecks, he grew, impatient, and said peevishly, " There 
are places where I also am admired." 2 

Goldsmith often tried to shine in conversation, but always 
stumbled ; and the contrast between his published works and 
what he spoke was such that Horace Walpole called him an 
" inspired idiot ; " and Garrick said, " Noll wrote like an angel, 
and talked like poor Poll." In defiance of his own senses, he 
obstinately maintained, even angrily, says Macaulay, that he 
chewed his dinner by moving his upper jaw. 

After Goldsmith's " Traveller " appeared, his fame suddenly 
grew, and his society began to be courted. It is not strange 
that unusual attentions fed his conceit. The story of the 
terms of Goldsmith's answer to a dinner invitation which had 
been given to him used to be frequently repeated by envious 
rivals. " I would with pleasure accept your kind invitation ; 
but to tell you the truth, my dear boy, my ' Traveller ' has 
found me a home in so many places that I am engaged, I be- 
lieve, three days. Let me see : to-day I dine with Edmund 

1 Swift was guilty of a similar blunder in the " Voyage to the Land of 
Houyhnhnms," where he states that all animals reject the use of salt but man ; 
whereas many of the herbivorous animals are more fond of it than man him- 
self. And Jeremy Taylor, in spite of his wonderful genius and eloquence, was 
also very slipshod and uncritical as to his facts, if they only served his purpose. 
He not only accepts of a monument " nine furlongs high," erected by Ninus, 
but he tells us, " When men sell a mule, they speak of the horse that begat him, 
not of the ass that bore him." 

2 This is a story of Boswell, who was certainly jealous of Goldsmith, and it 
may not have been well founded, or said only as a jest. 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 35 

Burke, to-morrow with Dr. Nugent, and the next day with 
Topham Beauclerc ; but I '11 tell you what i" 7/ do for you : I '11 
dine with you on Saturday." 

No doubt " my dear boy " felt grateful to be done for in 
that way. 

Dr. Johnson had a way of contracting the names of his 
friends — as, Boswell, Bozzy; Goldsmith, Goldy — with which 
Goldsmith was not pleased. When told that Johnson had 
said, " We are all in labor for a name to Goldy's play," he 
muttered, " I have often desired him not to call me Goldy." 

In a circle of wits one evening, he found fault with some 
one for talking of Johnson as entitled to the honor of unques- 
tionable superiority. " Sir," said Goldsmith, "you are making 
a monarchy of what should be a republic." 

In a letter to Reynolds, while on a visit at Paris, he says, 
" I wish I could send you some amusement in this letter ; but 
I protest I am so stupefied by the air of this country (for I 
am sure it can never be natural) that I have not a word to 
say." 

At a meeting of the London Literary Club v Langton men- 
tioned with commendation some recent work of a favorite 
author. Goldsmith, with characteristic jealous vanity, blurts 
out, " Here 's such a stir about a fellow that has written one 
book, and I have written many." " Ah ! Doctor," says John- 
son, " two and forty sixpences, you know, to one guinea." It 
was thus they constantly poked fun at poor Goldy ; but he got 
in a blow on Johnson's " Rasselas," where all the uncultured 
and humblest characters were made to appear in the stately 
tread of Johnson's pompous phraseology, when he said, " The 
little fishes speak like whales, and the women are all Johnsons 
in petticoats." 

Mr. R. G. White says, " When Goldsmith, jealous of the 
attention which a dancing monkey attracted in a coffee-house, 
said, ' I can do that as well,' and was about to attempt it, he 
was but playing Bottom." 

Boswell, undoubtedly disposed to underrate Goldsmith, 
relates that " at the exhibition of the Fantoccini in London, 
when those who sat next him observed with what dexterity a 



36 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

puppet was made to toss a pike, he (Goldsmith) could not 
bear that it should have such praise, and exclaimed with some 
warmth, ' Pshaw ! I can do it better myself.' " 

Dr. Johnson said Goldsmith once complained to him, in 
ludicrous terms of distress, u Whenever I write anything, the 
public make a point to know nothing about it." 



B. 1775. JAMES BOSWELL. D. 1822. 

Whatever rank we may think James Boswell fills as the 
biographer of Dr. Johnson, most men will admit the absolute 
verity of Boswell' s own prefatory estimate of his work, where 
he says, " As it is, I will venture to say that he (Dr. John- 
son) will be seen in this work more completely than any man 
who has ever vet lived." 

Boswell, thinking himself greatly superior to Goldsmith, says, 
when the latter obtained an invitation to dinner from Johnson, 
that he " went strutting away ; " and adds, " I confess I envied 
him this mighty privilege, of which he seemed so proud ; but 
it was not long before /obtained the same mark of distinction." 

Boswell was admitted to the celebrated London Literary 
Club, at the " Turk's Head " Tavern, because he was pro- 
posed by Dr. Samuel Johnson, about 1774. Burke, Goldsmith, 
Reynolds, Garrick, and several other noted men of their day, 
assembling here periodically, made their table-talk of historic 
interest. Boswell records much of it. When the eating is 
over the bottles go their round. Burke takes claret, and the 
Doctor ejaculates, " Poor stuff, sir. Claret is the liquor for 
boys, .port for men ; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink 
brandy." Burke responds, " Then, sir, give me claret, for I 
like to be a boy, and partake of the honest hilarity of youth." 
Sir Joshua Reynolds remarked, " Sir, I think wine is very 
useful, as well as pleasant ; I am sure that moderate drinking 
makes people talk better." " No, sir," replies the Doctor : 
" wine gives not light, gay, ideal hilarity, but tumultuous, 
noisy, clamorous merriment." Boswell, at much risk, now 
slips in his word : " You must allow, sir, at least, that it pro- 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 37 

duces truth — in vino Veritas. A man who is well warmed 
with wine will speak the truth.''' " Why, sir," quoth the Doc- 
tor, " that may be an argument for drinking, if you suppose 
men in general to be liars. But, sir, I would not keep com- 
pany with a fellow who lies as long as he is sober, and whom 
you must make drunk before you can get a word of truth out 
of him." " Sir," answered Bozzy, " I remember how heartily 
you and I used to drink wine together when we were first 
acquainted, and how I used to have a headache after sitting up 
with you." " Nay, sir," said the rough Doctor, x " it was not 
the wine that made your head ache, but the sense that I put 
into it." 

B. 1551. SIR EDWARD " COKE. D. 1633. 

Sir Edward Coke, though esteemed pedantic by lawyers, 
was a learned and most prolific writer, and among the " thirty 
books which he had written with his own hand," he declared 
that the " most pleasing to himself was a manual which he 
called i Vade Me cum f from whence at one view he took a pros- 
pect of his life past." A slave to the Crown while he was 
Attorney-General, he did not hesitate to assert himself when 
advanced to be judge. Among other assumptions he had 
styled himself Lord Chief Justice of England, when it was 
declared that "his title was his own invention, since he was 
no more than of the King's Bench." 

So, our late Chief Justice Chase, on the Johnson Impeach- 
ment trial, assumed the title of Chief Justice of the United 
States, though only the chief of the Supreme Court. 

When Sir Edward Coke was in the Tower, he was informed 
that the King would allow him " eight of the best learned in the 
law to advise him for his cause." The great lawyer thanked 
him, but said he " knew himself to be accounted to have as 

1 " Talking once," says Boswell, of his being much distinguished at school, 
Johnson told him that " they never thought to raise me by comparing me 
to any one ; they never said Johnson is as good a scholar as such a one, but 
such a one is as good a scholar as Johnson ; and this was said but of one, but of 
Lowe ; and I do not think he was as good a scholar." 



38 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

much skill in the law as any man in England, and therefore 
needed no such help, nor feared to be judged by the law." 

When Bacon published his " Novum Organum," thought by 
many to be the greatest work of the human intellect, he sent 
a copy to Sir Edward Coke, who expressed his contempt for 
the author by writing the following distich on the titlepage, 
which bore a cut of a ship sailing through the Pillars of 
Hercules : — 

" It deserveth not to be read in schools, 
But to be freighted in the ship of fools." 



B. 1781. LORD CAMPBELL. D. 1861. 

When Lord Campbell, author of the " Lives of the Lord 
Chancellors and Lord Chief Justices," stood as a candidate in 
Edinburgh for Parliament, he addressed them thus : — 

" Gentlemen, electors of Edinburgh and fellow-countrymen, 
here is a plain John Campbell before you as a candidate for 
the high honor of your suffrages. I must say that I think it 
rather hard on me to say that if I had been merely plain John 
Campbell I might have been elected, and that all hopes of 
my ambition being crowned with success must be forever 
extinguished by the eminence to which I have had the good 
fortune to attain." 

He got the seat, notwithstanding he was something more 
than plain John Campbell, — a fact which he appeared after all 
not unwilling to have known. 

Campbell, in his younger days, when in low spirits, appeared 
contented to lead the life of a clergyman, as his father had 
proposed, and wrote to his father : — 

" My opinion of myself becomes lower and lower every day. 
I have no longer the most distant hope of ever composing with 
elegance, or of making any figure in the literary world. I can 
only wish for some retreat where I might employ myself in 
writing sermons and fattening pigs, where I might live and 
die unknown." 

Soon after, and before he had reached the age of twenty-one, 
he writes to his father in a different strain : — 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 39 

" When I am in bad spirits, and sitting alone in my gloomy 
garret, I contemplate with pleasure the idea of being licensed 
and procuring a settlement in the Church. I spurn it when 
I hear the eloquent addresses of Law, of Gibbs, of Erskine ; 
and while my heart burns within me, a secret voice assures me 
that if I make the attempt I shall be as great as they." 

To his sister, only a few weeks later, he wrote : " Although 
I am friendless at present, I am not sure that it ought to be 
assumed that I shall be without friends six years hence. Dur- 
ing that long period surely some opportunity will occur of 
forming desirable connections, and every opportunity I shall 
sedulously improve. In about six years after I am called to 
the Bar, I expect to have distinguished myself so much as to be 
in possession of a silk gown and a seat in Parliament. I shall 
not have been long in the House of Commons before I interest 
the Minister in my favor, and am made Solicitor- General. The 
steps then, though high, are easy ; and, after being a short time 
Attorney-General, and Master of the Rolls, I shall get the seals 
with the title of Earl Auld-Kirk-Yaird. I am sorry that this 
last sentence has escaped me, as it is the only one that did 
not come from the bottom of my heart." 

He did obtain his silk gown in six years ; the Attorney- 
Generalship and the seat in Parliament, however, hung back 
for more than thirty years ; but at length all the dreams of his 
boyhood were more than fulfilled, and at the age of eighty, 
having been Chief Justice of England for ten years, he became 
Lord Chancellor, and was found equal to the " labors and 
anxieties of the Great Seal." Few boys have been able to 
mark out for themselves a career among distinguished men 
with greater accuracy. 



B. 1770. WORDSWORTH. D. 1850. 

When Wordsworth was told that of all his poems " The 
Happy Warrior " was Dr. Channing's favorite, he said : " Ay, 
that was not on account of the poetic conditions being best ful- 
filled in that poem ; but because it is " (solemnly) " a chain of 
extremely valooable thoughts." 



40 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1777. THOMAS CAMPBELL. D. 1844. 

The poems of Thomas Campbell, " The Pleasures of Hope," 
" Gertrude of Wyoming," " The Last Man," and even " Ye 
Mariners of England," are as well known on this side of the 
Atlantic as on the other ; and we still find, as Washington 
Irving said in 1811, " his poems, like the stars, shining on 
with undiminished lustre." He delivered lectures on poetry 
before the Royal Institution, taking considerable trouble in 
trying to rid himself of his broad Scotch brogue, and wrote to 
his friend, the Rev. A. Alison : — 

" I took, however, great pains with the first lecture ; and, 
though I was flattered by some friends saying I had thrown 
away too many good things for the audience, yet I have a very 
different opinion. I felt the effect of every sentence and 
thought which I had tried to condense. You will think me 
mad in asserting the audience to be enlightened ; but now I 
must think them so, — wise and enlightened as gods, since 
they cheered me so ! And you will think me very vain in tell- 
ing you all this." 

Byron met him at Holland House, and writes that, after 
dinner, " We were standing in the ante-saloon when Lord H. 
brought out of the other room a vessel of some composition 
similar to that used in Catholic churches ; and, seeing us, 
he exclaimed, 'Here is some incense for you!' Campbell 
answered, ' Carry it to Lord Byron ; he is used to it.' " 

It is related that the poet once asked, " Why do Americans 
always call me Camel ? I 've no hump on my back." 

In his old age he well said, " I believe when I am gone, 
justice will be done to me in this way, — that I was a pure 
writer. It is an inexpressible comfort, at my time of life, to 
be able to look back and feel that I have not written one line 
against religion or virtue." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 41 



B. 1769. WELLINGTON, DUKE OP. D. 1852. 

The despatches of the Duke of Wellington have been thought 
to be models of their kind, and late in life were appreciated by 
himself as well as others. It is related that the late Lord 
Aberdeen repeated to the Duke what Lord Brougham had said, 
that " when one reads those despatches one sees how it is that 
there is only one great general in a century." To which the 
Duke replied, u By God, it is quite true ; and when I read 
them myself, I cannot conceive how I can ever have written 
them.' , 

B. 1756. WILLIAM GODWIN. D. 1836. 

Godwin was affronted with Charles Lamb, because he told 
him his book about sepulchres was better than Hervey, but not 
so good as Sir Thomas Browne. 



B. 1788. BYRON. D. 1824. 

Many of the poets have been great egotists, and their heroes 
often seem only modified portraits of themselves. Byron is as 
much his own Cain, or his own Don Juan, as Goethe is his 
own Faust, or Milton his own Satan. They look for and find 
the grandest ideals of intellectual force in themselves. 

Byron was not unwilling to style himself " the Napoleon of 
rhyme," perhaps with some truth ; but it should be remem- 
bered that his " Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte," after his fall 
and captivity at St. Helena, was not a flattering portrait of 
the ex-emperor. 

" 'T is done — but yesterday a king ! 
And arm'd with kings to strive — 
And now thou art a nameless thing : 

So abject — yet alive ! 
Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, 
Nor man nor fiend hath fall'n so far." 
6 



42 SELF- CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

If Byron went to Greece, not to fight for glory, but, as has 
been said, to be rid of Madame Guiccioli, his own life is robbed 
of its heroic conclusion. 

In most of Byron's poetry he is supposed to be the chief 
figure. For instance, he says : — 

" For I am as a weed 
Flung from the rock, on ocean's foam to sail, 
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail." 

And again he draws his own portrait as follows : — 

" I disdained to mingle with 
A herd, though to be leader — and of wolves. 
The lion is alone, and so am I." 

Lord Byron was very apprehensive that he might be ex- 
cluded from the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, the 
" temple " where Great Britain gathers her honored dead. 
His doubt is disclosed in the following melancholy accents : — 

" If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, 
Of hasty growth, and dull Oblivion bar 
My name from out the temple where the dead 
Are honor'd by the nations — let it be ! " 



B. 1798. THOMAS MOORE. D. 1845. 

li Look how the lark soars upward and is gone, 

Turning a spirit as he nears the sky ! 
His voice is heard, but body there is none 

To fix the vague excursions of the eye. 
So poets' songs are with us, though they die 

Obscured, and hid by Death's oblivious shroud, 
And Earth inherits the rich melody, 

Like raining music from the morning cloud. 
Yet few there be who pipe so sweet and loud ; 

Their voices reach us through the lapse of space : 
The noisy day is deafen 'd by a crowd 

Of undistinguish'd birds, a twittering race ; 
But only lark and nightingale forlorn 
Fill up the silences of night and morn." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 43 



B. 1775. LAMB. D. 1834. 

In one of the " Essays of Elia" on " The Old Benches of 
the Inner Temple," Lamb draws his own character under the 
name of Lovel : — 

u He was a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty ; had 
a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to re- 
semble ; moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admira- 
tion, by the dint of natural genius merely ; had the merriest 
quips and conceits ; was altogether as brimful of rogueries 
and inventions as you could desire ; and just such a free, 
hearty, honest companion as Izaak Walton would have chosen 
to go a fishing with." 

Charles Lamb's reputation has mainly grown since his 
death. His first ventures had little of public sympathy, and 
yielded small profits. According to one of his biographers 
(Talfourd), he wrote to Procter, " Hang the age ! I will write 
for posterity ! " It now turns out that the biographer changed 
the original words, and that Lamb's words were " Damn the 
age! I will write for antiquity." It is true that profanity was 
not at this time wholly banished from good society ; and it is 
also a pity that this eccentric genius, as he himself expresses 
it, " kept a little on the wrong side of abstemiousness." 

When Lamb called upon the poet Wordsworth, he addressed 
him as follows: "Mr. Wordsworth, allow me to introduce to 
you my only admirer." 



B. 1740. SIR PHILIP FRANCIS [JUNIUS]. D. 1818. 

" Without intending an indecent comparison," said Junius, 
" I may express my opinion that the Bible and Junius will be 
read when the commentaries of the Jesuits are forgotten." 

In the dedication of his celebrated "Letters to the Eng- 
lish Nation," a similar idea is more elaborately repeated, as 
follows : — 



44 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

" When kings and ministers are forgotten, when force and 
direction of personal satire is no longer understood, and when 
measures are only felt in their remotest consequences, this 
book will, I believe, be found to contain principles worthy 
to be transmitted to posterity. . .... This is not the language 

of vanity. If I am a vain man, my gratification lies within 
a narrow circle. I am the sole depositary of my own secret, 
and it shall perish with me." 

But the secret has not perished. The world has long con- 
ceded the authorship to Sir Philip Francis, and there is less 
dispute about it now, notwithstanding former controversies, 
than about the authorship of Homer or of Shakespeare. 



B. 1708. LORD CHATHAM. D. 1778. 

The Great Commoner, Pitt, afterwards less great as Lord 
Chatham, was not devoid of confidence in himself. He said 
to the Duke of Devonshire in 1757, " I am sure that I can 
save this country, and that nobody else can ; " and this proved 
to be true. 

In 1770 Lord Chatham pretty roughly commented upon 
Burke's pamphlet, " Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Dis- 
contents ; " and more than twenty years after (1792) Burke 
refers to Chatham as "that grand artifice of fraud," and ex- 
claims, u Alas ! alas ! how different the real from the osten- 
sible man ! Must all this theatrical stuffing and raised heels 
be necessary for the character of a great man ?" 

" Impossible ! — it is not good French," said Napoleon. 
When Lord Anson of the Admiralty sent word to Chatham, 
who was suffering from a sharp attack of the gout, that his 
order to fit out the naval expedition within the time he had 
specified would be impossible, he exclaimed, " Who talks to 
me of impossibility?" Then rising to his feet, in spite of 
the increased agony of his sufferings, he added, "Tell Lord 
Anson that he serves under a minister who treads on im- 
possibilities." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 45 



B. 1758. NELSON, ADMIRAL LORD. D. 1805. 

England's greatest naval hero was not deficient in self 
assertion. In our own country we can hardly conceive that 
a scarcity of bread was ever a possibility ; but in the year 
1800 the price of a quartern loaf of bread in England rose to 
one shilling and tenpence halfpenny ; and it became the 
fashion to give dinners where the guests were asked to bring 
their own bread. To one of these Nelson was invited, perhaps 
without notice of such a condition. At any rate, when he 
found himself without bread, he called his servant, and before 
the whole company gave him a shilling, and ordered him to go 
and buy a roll, saying aloud, " It is hard that after fighting 
my country's battles, I should be grudged her bread." The 
feelings of the host may be imagined. 

It may not be generally known that Nelson's last signal was 
not u England," but "Nelson expects every man to do his 
duty." It has been asserted that the officer to whom the 
order was given affected to have misunderstood the egotistical 
direction, and substituted the sounding rhetoric which was 
then and has been ever since received with so much enthu- 
siasm by Englishmen. 



B. 1778. HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM. D. 1868. 

Lord Brougham had great ambition to shine in many parts, 
to be a universal genius ; and yet what fame he has rests mainly 
upon him as a speaker. As a scientist he now cuts no figure ; 
as a judge, it was said he would have done well enough if he 
had only known a little law ; as one of the writers of the " Edin- 
burgh Review " he was jealous of his co-laborers, and berated 
Macaulay, who in return calls him a bad man. Of himself, 
Brougham says that it " has always been my chief ambition 
as to literary character (after eloquence, of course), — I mean 
the rank and station of an historian. I have some little knack 
of narrative, the most difficult by far of all styles, and never 



46 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

yet attained in perfection but by Hume and Livy ; and I bring 
as much oratory and science to the task as most of my prede- 
cessors ; nor does the exceedingly flimsy and puerile works 
of Alison, <fec, deter me from my favorite subject, — French 
Revolution." 

When Lord Brougham was first made a member of the Lib- 
eral Cabinet, as Lord Chancellor, by Earl Grey, he is reported 
to have said, " The Whigs are all ciphers, and I am the only 
unit in the Cabinet that gives a value to them." It is needless, 
perhaps, to add that he soon quarrelled with his associates, and 
his career as Chancellor quickly ended. 

A lady once asked Lord Brougham who was the best debater 
in the House of Lords. His lordship modestly replied, " Lord 
Stanley is the second, madam ; " evidently intending to leave 
the first place open to himself. 1 And in this he was not unlike 
every officer after the naval victory of the Greeks over Xerxes, 
when each one, when called upon to say who had most distin- 
guished himself, put his own name first and that of Themis- 
tocles second. 

Lord Brougham had an omnivorous appetite for praise. Six 
of his articles were admitted into one number of the " Edinburgh 
Review," and yet he complained before the issue of the next that 
he was " next thing to laid on the shelf." 

In the published correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, 
public curiosity has been largely fed by the letters of distin- 
guished contributors to the " Edinburgh Review," where all re- 
serve seems to have been flung aside and the sharpest personal 
criticisms found vent, mixed with occasional stalwart vanity. 
The editor, Napier, found it no light matter to keep the peace 
among so many, possessed each one of them with a reputation, 
and all eager for more. When with scissors he invaded an ar- 
ticle from Thackeray, the latter could not refrain from writing 

1 Hazlitt records a story of a foolish bell-ringer at Plymouth, as told by 
Northcote. He was proud of his ringing, and the boys, who made a jest of his 
foible, used to get him into the belfry and ask, " Well now, John, how many 
good ringers are there in Plymouth'?" "Two," he would say, without any 
hesitation. " Ay, indeed ! and who are they ? " " Why, first, there 's myself, 
that's one; and — and — " "Well, who's the other?" "Why, there's, 
there 's, — Ecod ! I can't think of any other but myself." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 47 

back: "From your liberal payment, I can't but conclude that 
you reward me not only for laboring, but for being mutilated in 
your service." Bulwer Lytton thanks the editor for " smooth- 
ing his article into shape," but cannot understand what were 
really his faults of style. Macaulay hoped the editor would 
" not scruple to exercise " his prerogative ; but when the scis- 
sors were applied we find him wincing. " The passages omit- 
ted," he complains, " were the most pointed and ornamental 
sentences in the review." Brougham gave the editor perpetual 
trouble. Forward to claim the first place himself, he could not 
tolerate the admiration of the editor nor of the public for Ma- 
caulay ; and when the latter was asked to yield a topic he had 
begun to treat to Brougham he was indignant, and declared he 
was "the person of all persons to whom he felt least inclined 
to stoop." In another letter Macaulay says : " Brougham does 
one thing well, two or three things indifferently, and a hundred 
things detestably. His Parliamentary speaking is admirable, 
his forensic speaking poor, his writings at the very best second- 
rate." 

But the appearance of any article by Macaulay seems to have 
been a signal for Brougham to unbottle his bile. Of Macaulay's 
Essay on Sir William Temple, he says it is " an excellent paper, 
only he does take a terrible space to turn in. Good God ! what 
an awful man he would have been in Nisi Prius ! He can say 
nothing under ten pages. He takes as long to delineate three 
characters of little importance as I have to sketch ten, the 
greatest in the whole world." 

The unhesitating manner of Brougham in self-applause would 
alone make him wonderful. About one of his speeches he 
writes : " I was obliged to exert myself last night as I had not 
done for years. The speech has made a great noise ; but, if it 
had one fault, there was no relief, no ordinary matter for the 
mind to rest upon. Every sentence was a figure or a passage. 
I marked that, for an hour and a half by the clock, I was speak- 
ing in tropes and allusions." He ratted from his party when 
not asked to join the Cabinet, and said he punished them 
daily. " Depend upon it," he writes, " there is no great com- 
fort ever accrues to those who try their hands on my back." 



48 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

He did not hesitate to puff himself in articles published in 
the "Review," where he prints: ' k Of all the portentous signs 
of the times for the present Ministry, the most appalling is the 
nearly unanimous choice of Mr. Brougham to be member for 
Yorkshire. This is assuredly the most extraordinary event 
in the history of party politics." 

But Brougham at last occupied one field of vanity where he 
stands alone the unchallenged pioneer. He caused it to be 
given out that he had been killed in a carriage accident, merely 
to learn what eulogiums would be presented by the newspapers, 
and which it appears he enjoyed keenly. " A lie daily repeated," 
as he wrote to Napier, but did not tell by whom it was concocted, 
"by two or three papers in London and one in Edinburgh has 
deceived you all, namely, that the people of this country no 
longer have any care about me. Is it so ? Look at the last 
week and tell. Let this show the risk of men in a party giving 
up an old leader because another happened for the hour to be 
invested with office." 

And yet Brougham, " the tremendous Harry," was for some 
years actually the most important person in the British Par- 
liament. 

When Brougham was made Lord Chancellor the following 
sarcasm, attributed to Baron Alderson, was set afloat: — 

" What a wonderful, versatile mind has Brougham ! He 
knows politics, Greek, history, science ; if he only knew a 
little of law, he would know a little of everything." 



B. 1800, THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. D. 1859. 

" I read Guizot's ' Sir Robert Peel,' " writes Macaulay ; and 
adds: " Hardly quite worthy of Guizot's powers, I think ; nor 
can it be accepted as a just estimate of Peel. / could draw 
his portrait much better ; but for many reasons I shall not do 
so." 

Lord Macaulay, in 1852, writes : " My book seems to me 
certain to be a failure. Yet when I look up any part and read 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 49 

it, I cannot but see that it is better than other works on the 
same subject." 

Oct. 8, 1853, he writes : " I worked at the Factory speech, 
but did little. I like the speech amazingly ; I rather think 
that it is my very best." 

Writing of the House of Commons (Dec. 19, 1845) he says : 
" Labouchere and Baring are at least as good men of business 
as Grey ; and I may say without vanity that I have made 
speeches which were out of the reach of any of them. But 
taking the talent for business and the talent for speaking to- 
gether, Grey is undoubtedly the best qualified for the lead ; 
and we are perfectly sensible of this." 

Macaulay observed great method in his daily task of writing, 
— as was said of Sir Walter Raleigh, " He could labor ter- 
ribly," — but worked only so long as he could do his best. " I 
had no head to write," he says in his journal of March 6, 1851. 
" I am too self-indulgent in this matter, it may be ; and yet I 
attribute much of the success which I have had to my habit of 
writing only when I am in the humor, and of stopping as soon 
as the thoughts and words cease to flow fast. There are, 
therefore, few lees in my wine ; it is all the cream of the 
bottle." 

In 1842 he wrote to the editor of the " Edinburgh Review " 
as follows : " My reviews are generally thought to be better 
written, and they certainly live longer, than the reviews of 
most other people; and this ought to content me." He did 
not care what the Yankees did with his reviews ; but at this 
time he did not favor their republication in England, but said, 
" If I live twelve or fifteen years, I may perhaps produce 
something which I may not be afraid to exhibit side by side 
with the performances of the old masters." 

Macaulay, when about to review Croker's Boswell's " John- 
son," observed : " See whether I do not dust that varlet's 
jacket for him." Of course he did it — afterwards having his 
own back not lightly touched in return ; but it was not unlike 
the self-confidence of Daniel Webster, — who had as little of self- 
consciousness as even Shakespeare, — upon the evening before 
he made his celebrated reply to Hayne, when inquired of by a 

7 



50 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

friend whether he was ready, answered that he had got four 
fingers in, — words which indicated a heavy charge of powder 
for the old Springfield musket. 

But even Webster, after being defeated as a candidate for 
the Presidency, did not hesitate to say that the nomination of 
General Taylor was one " not fit to be made ; " and yet he 
promptly accepted the first place as Secretary of State in the 
Cabinet of Fillmore, Vice-President elected on the same ticket, 
and who became President upon the death of President Taylor. 

Upon his own style, as a writer of history, Macaulay bestowed 
this very just criticism, that it was " a good style, but very 
near a bad one." 

When Macaulay had finished the two volumes of his " History 
of England," he wrote on the eve of their publication as follows : 
" I am pretty well satisfied, as compared with excellence, the 
work is a failure ; but as compared with other similar books, I 
cannot think so. We shall soon know what the world says." 



B. 1805. DISRAELI, EARL OP BEACONSPIELD. D. 1880. 

Disraeli, the late Premier of Great Britain, presented himself 
as a candidate for Parliament several times before he finally 
succeeded in entering. On one of these occasions, about 1835, 
in the course of his canvass, he publicly denounced Daniel 
O'Connell as a " bloody traitor." To this O'Connell afterwards 
replied, taking advantage of Disraeli's Jewish parentage, and 
said, for ought he knew, Disraeli might be " the true heir-at- 
law of the impenitent thief who died on the cross." For this 
Disraeli challenged the son of the Great Agitator, Morgan O'Con- 
nell, but the challenge was not accepted. The published corre- 
spondence showed that Disraeli threatened to meet the redoubt- 
able Daniel at Philippi, where he would avenge the insult upon 
the first opportunity ; and accordingly his first speech in Parlia- 
ment contained a violent denunciation of O'Connell. But it 
was such a notable failure as to be greeted with continual jeers 
and laughter. He ended it, however, amid all sorts of loud 
noises, with these words : " I am not surprised at the reception 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 51 

I have experienced. I have succeeded .at last. Ay, sir ; and 
though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear 
me." And it did come, only two years afterwards. 



B.1778. WILLIAM HAZLITT. D. 1830. 

" Here, too, I have written Table-Talks without number, and 
as yet without falling off, till now that they are nearly done, 
or I should not make this boast, I could swear (were they not 
mine) the thoughts in many of them are founded as the rock, 
free as air, the tone like an Italian picture." 



B. 1795. CARLYLE. D. 1881. 

In 1820 Carlyle wrote a letter to his mother, from which the 
following is an extract : — 

" I am not of a humor to care very much for good or evil 
fortune, so far as concerns myself. The thought that my some- 
what uncertain condition gives you uneasiness chiefly grieves 
me. Yet I would not have you despair of your ribe of a boy. 
He will do something yet. He is a shy, stingy soul, and very 
likely has a higher notion of his parts than others have. But, 
on the other hand, he is not incapable of diligence. He is 
harmless, and possesses the virtue of his countrymen — thrift ; 
so that, after all, things will yet be right in the end. My love 
to all the little ones. " Your affectionate son, 

"T. Carlyle." 

Thomas Carlyle in 1832 had been waiting long in vain to find 
a book publisher for his " History of the French Revolution," 
and felt that the world was in its " dotage " because it was not 
more appreciative of his merits. He writes : u I have given 
up the notion of hawking my little manuscript book about any 
further : for a long time it has lain quiet in its drawer, waiting 
for a better day. The bookselling trade seems on the edge of 
dissolution." 



52 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

The work was not published until even five years after this, 
and then his graphic history fully justified the high opinion of 
the author. 

B. 1819. RUSKIN. 

Perhaps no modern writer has presented to the public more 
or better examples of attractive and sparkling English than 
Mr. Ruskin. Whether we agree with him or not, his original 
and racy style, like the " Stones of Venice," will long com- 
mand attention ; and yet his unbounded satisfaction with his 
own ex cathedra judgment upon all questions of politics, as 
well as of the arts, and of all things human and divine, is less 
hidden by any modest drapery than the limbs of a ballet-dancer 
in a French opera-house. His preface to the letters just pub- 
lished runs and ripples with what he appropriately describes as 
"extremely fine compliments to himself." Dated at Rouen, 
he finds himself, he says, " lying in bed in the morning, read- 
ing these remnants of my old self, and that with much content- 
ment and thankful applause." As to the letters, he adds: " In 
the entire mass of them there is not a word I wish to change, 
not a statement I have to retract ; and, I believe, few pieces of 
advice which the reader will not find it for his good to act 
upon." 

One more extract from this lofty preface to lofty letters of 
forty years, which in their day were by no means dull reading : — 

" Whatever (for instance) I have urged in economy has ten 
times the force when it is remembered to have been pleaded 
for by a man loving the splendor and advising the luxury of 
ages which overlaid their towers with gold and their walls 
with ivory. No man oftener than 1 has had cast into his teeth 
the favorite adage of the insolent and the feeble — i ne sutor.'' 
But it has always been forgotten by the speakers that, although 
the proverb might on some occasions be wisely spoken by an 
artist to a cobbler, it could never be wisely spoken by a cobbler 
to an artist." 1 

1 On a steamer from Calais to Dover (Oct. 1, 1880), one of the passengers 
was pointed out to me as Ruskin. He was rather thin and small, about five feet 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSON'S. 53 



B. 1804. EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. D. 1872. 

Some men prefer to be abused rather than not to be noticed 
by the public. Even Edward Bulwer Lytton, the novelist, felt 
hurt that he had not been (Sept. 8, 1830) reviewed in the " Edin- 
burgh Review," and so wrote to the editor: "I think I have 
no pretensions to be praised by the ' Edinburgh,' but I think I 
have some to be reviewed." He refers to the large sale of his 
novels, and to their translation into most European languages, 
and adds, " So that, if they now stand at the door of the ' Edin- 
burgh Review,' it is not cap in hand as a humble mendicant, 
but rather like a bluff creditor who answers your accusations 
of his impertinence by begging you to settle his bill at the 
first opportunity." 

Three days after he comes to the scratch again, and says : 
" Now I see the whole matter. The long and short of it is, 
I must be attacked. God forbid I should say a word against 
that ! " And closes by saying, " God bless you ; and mind, your 
contributors are at full liberty to ridicule, abuse, and (allow the 
author of ' Paul Clifford ' to employ a slang word) victimize me, 
so long as you say, with a gentle shake of the head, ' Oh ! he 
is not such a bad fellow after all.' " 

Like Bulwer, Brougham desired to have his works reviewed, 
and wrote to the editor of the u Edinburgh " as follows: " Pray is 
not my ' Principia ' and ' Instinct ' to be reviewed ? It should be 
done without any praise at all, even if it deserved it ; but it 
should really have the benefit of being made known. The 
' Instinct' is full of original ideas and arguments. The ' Prin- 
cipia' is the only deep and learned commentary on the greatest 
and most inaccessible work of man, and yet I undertake to say 
it enables any one to read and follow it." 

seven inches in height, with an undue proportion of legs ; and wore a swallow- 
tail coat and a bright blue necktie. His age might be about sixty -five ; his 
appearance was slightly eccentric. 



54 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1802. HARRIET MARTINEAU. D. 1876. 

As is well known, Harriet Martineau held to the doctrine of 
annihilation. So repugnant was this idea to W. E. Forster, 
M.P., that he said he " would rather be damned than annihi- 
lated ; " upon which Miss Martineau observed that, "if he 
once felt five minutes' damnation, he would be thankful for 
extinction in preference." 

When the printer of her book on Political Economy was 
about to draw back, afraid of the venture, she said : " But I 
tell you this : the people want this book, and they shall 
have it." 

It turned out as she said. 



P.. 1815. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 

Anthony Trollope, in the " North American Review," writes 
very patronizingly of our poet Longfellow ; says he has " crept 
up to our hearts," and assures his readers that he is an " un- 
commonly pleasant fellow ; " but he does not allow him to be 
quite the equal of his favorite English poets. He would not 
hurt his feelings, but then he is " not great — seldom magnifi- 
cent." In order to unfold the poetic graces of Mr. Longfellow, 
Mr. Trollope contrives to push his own merits to the front, and 
is kind enough to say : — 

" I myself cannot describe places ; I enjoy the beauty and 
the feeling of scenic effect, but I lack the words to render them 
delightful to others. But I have some trick in depicting scenes, 
and have been often complimented on my sketch of clerical 
life. I am told that I must have lived in cathedral cities, and 
the like, and have with a certain mild denial carried off the 
compliments." 

Mr. Longfellow is always modest, and, with all his readers, 
here and abroad, has never claimed that he was " often compli- 
mented ; " nor has he " carried off the compliments with a 
certain mild denial." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 55 



B. 1786. THOMAS DE QUINCEY. D. 1859. 

" At thirteen," says De Quincey, " I wrote Greek with ease ; 
and at fifteen my command of that language was so great, 
that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but 
could converse in Greek fluently, and without embarrassment, 
— an accomplishment which I have not since met with in any 
scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the 
practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek 
I could furnish extempore. . . . ' That boy," said one of my 
masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, — 'that 
boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could 
address an English one.' " 1 



B. 1809. COUNT CAVOUR. D. 1860. 

Long before the revolution in Italy brought Count Cavour 
to the front, he wrote, in 1853, to a lady as follows : — 

" I am very grateful, madame, for the interest you are kind 
enough to take in my misfortunes ; but I assure you I shall 
make my way notwithstanding. I own I am ambitious — 
enormously ambitious — and when I am minister, I hope I 
shall justify my ambition. In my dreams I see myself already 
minister of the Kingdom of Italy." 

That dream came to pass. 



B. 1483. LUTHER. LD. 1546. 

When Martin Luther first denied the right of the Pope 
to grant indulgences or to forgive sins, his indignation was 

1 George P. Marsh, while minister at Constantinople, was sent on a special 
mission to Greece, and, it is said, was quite competent to carry on conversation 
in the Greek language, although there is much difference in the language of 
modern Greece from that of Homer and Plato. 



56 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

particularly excited by the traffic of John Tetzel, a Dominican 
friar who was active in raising funds by the sale of the Pope's 
indulgences ; and Luther exclaimed, " God willing, I will beat 
a hole in his drum ! " 



B. 1733. CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND. D. 1813. 

u You, my friend, know me well enough to know that I am 
satisfied with my lot in every point of view. . . . But I should 
arrogate to myself a merit to which I have no claim, were I 
to deny that, after spending the greater part of my life in the 
service of the Muses, I have done more for myself than for 
others. It was pure truth, and will probably remain true to 
the end of my days, that I said to my Muse, from the fulness 
of my heart, more than fifteen years ago, when living at the 
furthest extreme of South Germany, entirely excluded from 
our Parnassus, and without any literary connections, — 

" If thou pleasest not, if world and connoisseur agree 
To disparage thy merit, 
Let thy consolation be, in this calamity, 
That with sweet pains thou hast conferred much joy on me. 
Thou art still, Muse ! the happiness of my life, 
And if no one listens to thee, thou singest to me alone." 



B. 1749. GOETHE. D. 1832. 

" If I were to say what I had really been to the Germans 
in general, and to the young German poets in particular, I 
should say I had been their liberator." 



B. 1797. HEINRICH HEINE. D. 1856. 

See how gently he waives the laurel wreath, while most 
anxious to clutch more than its equivalent : — 

" I know not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should one 
day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have loved it, 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 57 

has always been to me but a divine plaything. I have never 
attached any great value to poetical fame ; and I trouble my- 
self very little whether people praise my verses or blame them. 
But lay on my coffin a sivord : for I was a brave soldier in 
the war of liberation of humanity." 



B. 65. b. c. HORACE. D. 8. b. c. 

Horace pays a very indifferent compliment to a contemporary 
in the ode addressed to him, in order to claim a higher one for 
himself. "No one," he says, "is happy in every respect. 
And I may perhaps enjoy some advantages which you are 
deprived of. You possess great riches ; your bellowing herds 
cover the Sicilian plains ; your chariot is drawn by the finest 
horses ; and you are arrayed in the richest purple. But the 
indulgent Fates, with a small inheritance, have given me 
a fine genius, and have endowed me with a contempt for the 
malignant judgments of the vulgar." 

Horace claimed that his songs would " last as long as the 
priestess ascended the steps" of the Roman Capitol, — and 
they have much longer. 

B. 87 b. c. SALLUST. D. 35 b. c. 

" It becomes all men, who desire to excel other animals, to 
strive to the utmost of their power not to pass through life in 
obscurity, like the beasts of the field, which nature has found 
grovelling and subservient to appetite. 

" All our power is situate in the mind and in the body. Of 
the mind we rather employ the government ; of the body the ser- 
vice. The one is common to us with the gods ; the other with 
the brutes. It appears to me, therefore, more reasonable to 
pursue glory by means of the intellect than of bodily strength ; 
and, since the life which we enjoy is short, to make the remem- 
brance of us as lasting as possible. For the glory of wealth 
and beauty is fleeting and perishable ; that of intellectual power 
is illustrious and immortal." 

8 



58 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 443 b. c. XENOPHON. 1 D. 355 b. c. 

Xenophon, the adopted citizen of Athens, and the best his- 
torian of Alexander, in one of his books suddenly interrupts 
the thread of his narrative to tell his readers that he himself 
is as " eminent among the Greeks for eloquence as Alexander 
was for arms." 

B. 471 b. c. THUCYDIDES. D. 400 b. e. 

Thucydides applied the following remark to his own great 
work : — 

" It is composed so as to be regarded as a possession for- 
ever, rather than as a prize declamation, intended only for the 
present." 

PH^EDRUS. 

[Lived in the reign of Tiberius.] 

Phsedrus says to his patron Eutychus : " If you design to 
read my works, I shall be pleased ; if not, I shall at least have 
the advantage of pleasing posterity." 



B. 514 b. c. THEMISTOCLES. P. 449 b. c. 

When Themistocles, being awkward in his manners, was 
derided in company, where free scope was given to raillery by 
persons who passed as more accomplished in what was called 
genteel breeding, Plutarch informs us that he replied with 
proud asperity, " 'T is true I never learned how to tune a harp 
or play upon a lute ; but I know how to raise a small and 
inconsiderable city to glory and greatness." 

In early life he earned the reproach of following his own 
disposition without any moral restraints, and apologized for 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 59 

this afterwards when he observed, that "the wildest colts 
make the best horses, when they come to be broken and 
properly managed." 

Cicero said of Pompey that " he was a lover of himself 
without a rival." 

It was of Lord Burleigh the remark was made that " no 
man could be as wise as he looked." 

" Some help themselves," writes Bacon, " with countenance 
and gesture, and are wise by signs, as Cicero saith of Piso, 
that, when he answered him, he fetched one of his brows up 
to his forehead, and bent the other down to his chin." 

Nero had the same vanity in driving a chariot that Trajan 
had in governing an empire with justice and ability. 



B. 40. QUINTILIAN. D. 118. 

Quintilian declares that self-applause is more tolerable than 
" the hypocritical boastfulness of those who speak of themselves 
as poor when they abound with wealth, as obscure when they 
are of high rank, as weak when they have great influence, as 
ignorant and incapable of speaking when they are possessed of 
great eloquence. It is an ostentatious kind of vanity to speak 
thus ironically of ourselves. Let us be content to be praised 
by others, for it becomes us, as Demosthenes says, to blush even 
when we hear other men's commendations of ourselves" 

Quintilian also observes that he wishes Cicero " had been 
more modest, since the malicious have never ceased to remark 
upon his 



and 



' To gowns let arras succumb, and laurel crowns 
To eloquence ; ' x 



' happy Rome, that found new life when I 
Was consul.' " 2 



1 " Cedant arma togae, concedat laurea lingua?. " 

2 " O fortunatam natara me consule Romam." 



60 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 106 b. c. CICERO. D. (assassinated) 43 b. c. 

One of the boldest examples of Cicero's great confidence in 
himself is to be found in one of his orations, where, referring to 
his great Roman rival (Antony), he exclaims : " Would he wish 
to engage with me in a contest of eloquence ? He would then 
confer an obligation on me: for what ampler field, what more 
copious subject could I desire, than opportunity of speaking on 
behalf of myself and against Antony ? " 

The conspicuous vanity of Cicero is well known, especially 
in his Dialogues, where he makes his friend Atticus and others 
decorate him with constant praise. In his remarks on " emi- 
nent orators," of whom it is not too much to say he was him- 
self the most eminent, after referring to the gradual decay of 
the eloquence of Hortensius, he makes, as usual, the personal 
pronoun prominent, and says, " I, at the same time, spared no 
pains to improve and enlarge my talents, such as they were, 
by every exercise that was proper for the purpose, but particu- 
larly that of writing. Not to mention several other advantages 
I derived from it, I shall only observe that about this time, 
and but a very few years after my asdileship, I was declared 
the first praetor by the unanimous suffrages of my fellow- 
citizens. For, by my diligence and assiduity as a pleader, and 
my accurate way of speaking, which was rather superior to the 
ordinary style of the bar, the novelty of my eloquence had 
engaged the attention and secured the good wishes of the 
public." After all this he adds, " But I will say nothing of 
myself." 

When Lucceius announced his purpose of writing a history 
which should include the Catilinarian Conspiracy, we find that 
Cicero did not scruple to beg him to enlarge a little on the 
truth. " You must grant something to our friendship," said 
he ; " let me pray you to delineate my exploits in a way that 
shall reflect the greatest possible glory on myself." 

Cicero, in his Commonwealth, is loud in praising himself 
for services in saving the Republic from the conspiracy of 
Catiline. He never forgets it, and says : — 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 61 

" Since, on my quitting the Consulship, I affirmed in the 
assembly of the Roman people, who re-echoed my words, that 
I had saved the Commonwealth, T console myself with this 
remembrance for all my cares, troubles, and injuries. Indeed, 
my dismission had more of honor than misfortune, and more 
of glory than disaster ; and I derive greater pleasure from the 
regrets of good men than sorrow from the exultation of the 
reprobate. But if it had happened otherwise, why should I 
complain ? Nothing befell me unforeseen, or more painful than 
I expected, as a return for my illustrious actions. I was one 
who, on occasion, could derive more profit from leisure than 
most men, on account of the diversified sweetness of my 
studies, in which I have lived from boyhood." 

After Pompey had overthrown Mithridates, and was coming 
back with the fame of successes in Asia, Cicero feared that the 
lustre of his own name might be eclipsed. " I used to be in 
alarm," he confesses, " that six hundred years hence the merits 
of Sampsiceramus 1 might seem to have been more than 
mine." 

Montaigne did not admire Cicero, and says : — 

" As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that (learning 
excepted) he had no great natural parts. He was a good citi- 
zen, of an affable nature, as all fat, heavy men, such as he 
was, usually are, but given to ease, and had a weighty share of 
vanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him 
for thinking his poetry fit to be published. 'T is no great 
imperfection to make ill verses ; but it is an imperfection not 
to be able to judge how unworthy his verses were of the glory 
of his name. For what concerns his eloquence, that is totally 
out of comparison. I believe it will never be equalled." 



B. 61. PLINY (The Younger). D. 116. 

In the days of Pliny, eighteen hundred years ago, books 
were multiplied by copyists only, and yet, when it was known 
that Tacitus was at work upon his History, it excited a wide 

1 The nickname which Cicero often gave to Pompey. 



62 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

and lively interest. Pliny says in a letter, " If my uncle is 
mentioned in your immortal work, his name will live forever in 
the records of fame." In another letter he shows some anxiety 
himself to " live forever," and says, " I presage that your 
history will be immortal. I ingenuously own, therefore, that I 
wish to find a place in it. If we are generally careful to have 
our faces taken by the best artist, ought we not to desire that 
our actions may be celebrated by an author of your distin- 
guished character ? " He then adds, " Whatever my merit 
may be in this business [the prosecution of Bebius Massa], 
it is in your power to heighten and spread the lustre of it ; 
though I am far from desiring you should in the least exceed 
the bounds of reality." 

Still, it is clear he would have him " heighten and spread 
the lustre of it." 

From Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy " I copy the fol- 
lowing : — 

" As Pliny doth ingenuously confess to his dear friend Angu- 
rinus, ' all thy writings are most acceptable, but those espe- 
cially that speak of us.' Again, a little after to Maximus, ' I 
cannot express how pleasing it is to me to have myself com- 
mended.' " 

According to Tully, in a letter to Atticus, " There was never 
yet true poet nor orator that thought any other better than 
himself." 

Nearly all of our candidates for the Presidency become the 
slaves of fame and popular opinion. Each of them could say 
with Trebellius Pollio, " 'T is all my desire night and day, 'tis 
all my study, to raise my name." 

Even proud Pliny was not ashamed to say in an epistle to 
a friend, " I burn with incredible desire to have my name 
registered in thy book." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 63 



B. 43 b. c. OVID. D. 18 a. d. 



A translation from the poet Ovid reads : — 

" And when I am dead and gone, 
My corpse laid under a stone, 
My fame shall yet survive, 
And I shall be alive ; 
In these my works, forever, 
My glory shall persever." , 



B. 1576. ROBERT BURTON. . D. 1640. 

Burton was said to have hastened the day of his death in 
order to enjoy the posthumous repute of having in his own 
epitaph correctly calculated the date of his departure. His 
"Anatomy of Melancholy" had a large reputation in its day, 
and no library does without it at the present time. Swift, 
Johnson, and Byron resorted to it for its literary anecdotes and 
learned quotations. 

" Yet thus much I will say of myself," writes Burton, " and 
that I hope without all suspicion of pride or self-conceit, I have 
lived^a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, mihi et mitsis, 
in the University, as long almost as Xenocrates in Athens, ad 
senectamfere, to learn wisdom as he did, penned up most part 
in my study, — for I have been brought up a student in the 
most flourishing college of Europe," &c. 



B. 1706. ' FRANKLIN. D. 1790. 

In his " Autobiography," Franklin says : " And lastly (I may 
as well '^confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by 
nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. 
Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, 
' Without vanity I may say,' &c, but some vain thing imme- 
diately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, what- 



64 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

ever share they may have of it themselves ; but I give it fair 
quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is 
often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that 
are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, 
it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God 
for his vanity, among the other comforts of life." 

In one of his letters he writes : " What you mention con- 
cerning the love of praise is indeed very true : it reigns more 
or less in every heart ; though we are generally hypocrites in 
that respect, and pretend to disregard praise, and our nice, 
modest ears are offended, forsooth ! with what one of the 
ancients calls the sweetest kind of music. I wish the out-of- 
fashion practice of praising ourselves would, like other old 
fashions, come round into fashion again. But this, J fear, will 
not be in our time." 



B. 1735. JOHN ADAMS. D. 1826. 

John Adams cannot be reckoned as unconscious of his claims 
to greatness. To show how he felt after his defeat by Jefferson, 
and when he was not even cordially supported by the Feder- 
alists, I take from a letter, written by him in 1808, the follow- 
ing extract : — 

" If my actions have not been sufficient to support my fame, 
let it perish. No higher ambition remains with me than to 
build a tomb upon the summit of the hill before my door, cov- 
ered with a six-foot cube of Quincy granite, with an inscription 
like this : — 

" Siste, Viator ! 
With much delight these pleasing hills you view, 
Where Adams from an envious world withdrew, 
Where, sick of glory, faction, power, and pride, 
Sure judge how empty all, who all had tried, 
Beneath his shades the weary chief repos'd, 
And life's great scene in quiet virtue clos'd." 1 

1 I know of no more remarkahle heredity of talent than that exhibited in the 
Adams family, continuing conspicuously even to the fourth generation, but all 
equally "constitutionally incapable of fidelity " to any political party. 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 65 



B. 1743. THOMAS JEFFERSON. D. 1826. 

Great and important as were the services of Thomas Jeffer- 
son, he was a bitter partisan, and by his resolutions of '98 
came near to planting a States-right obstruction in the path- 
way of the young Republic which threatened to end its career; 
but, instead, ended the career of John Adams, and made Jeffer- 
son his successor, which may, perhaps, have been the chief 
part of the original design. Jefferson, as well as John Adams, 
put a high value upon himself, and pursued his political oppo- 
nents with vitriolic hatred. His " Anas " — the publication of 
which is to be lamented — sputter and smoke with charges 
and insinuations against Hamilton ; and he treated Aaron 
Burr as his friend until Burr's power to serve or injure him 
was gone forever. The question asked by himself, whether 
the world was better for his having lived, he answers by a 
statement in detail of what he had done. That he should 
have been so embarrassed in his extreme old age as to ask the 
Virginia legislature for authority to dispose of his property by 
a lottery, is a melancholy fact ; and here again he catalogues 
his services, truthfully perhaps, but very stoutly. Though he 
had not escaped the virulence of criticism, he had certainly 
received more than compensatory public applause during his 
life, and was now diligent lest " the dull, cold ear of death " 
should escape being soothed by it afterwards. 

Here is one of his items, partly italicized by me : — * 

" If legislative services are worth mentioning, and the stamp 
of liberality and equality which was necessary to be imposed 
on our laws, in the first crisis of our birth as a nation, was of 
any value, they will find that the leading and most important 
laws of that day were prepared by myself and carried chiefly 
by my efforts ; supported, indeed, by able and faithful coadju- 
tors from the ranks of the House, very effective as seconds, 
but ivho would not have taken the field as leaders." 

The acquisition of the mouth of the Mississippi and of the 
Louisiana Territory, which he might justly have claimed as one 
of his measures, does not appear in his list, but practically it 
was the highest in merit. 



66 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1772. JOSIAH QUINCY. D. 1864. . 

In December, 1809, Mr. Quincy participated in the long de- 
bate in the House of Representatives on the conduct of the 
British Minister, Mr. Jackson, with whom President Madison 
had declined to hold further diplomatic intercourse, and made 
one of his most able and pungent speeches. Fully aware 
of its merits, he thus refers to it : — 

" On the 28th of December I delivered one of the most care- 
fully wrought and studied efforts I ever uttered. It had, of 
course, no effect at the time, and will probably have no interest 
in the future, the occasion being personal and temporary ; but 
it was an attempt to remove the opprobrium of uttering for 
political purposes what to my mind was false. I cannot regret 
it, it being in my judgment one of the most labored, respon- 
sible, and powerful of my efforts." 

France prohibited, us from trade with England ; England 
prohibited us from trade with France ; and as a remedy we 
adopted non-intercourse with both ! Quincy was right ; for 
never was there a more tame surrender — doing what both 
required, and wholly to our own injury ! 



B. 1767. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. D. 1848. 

John Quincy Adams, who was the most comprehensively 
educated of all our Presidents, and of broader culture than 
his father, greatly distrusted his ability as a debater, but was 
unrivalled as a controversial writer ; and it was after he took 
service at the age of sixty-five, in the House of Representatives, 
that he won the title of the " old man eloquent." His Diary, 
which has been published, reveals his temper and conscious- 
ness of power ; and I will cite an entry made March 27, 1835, 
as follows : — 

" Calhoun's tone is so self-sufficient and overbearing, and 
Webster's reasoning so utterly ignorant or unprincipled, that 
they provoked my temper, and I answer them with cutting 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 67 

sarcasm. The use of this weapon is seldom politic. In the 
present case it would certainly not be so ; I should write my 
speech over again, to say in mild, courteous terms and inoffen- 
sive language what I have said in consuming caustic. I can 
make no use of my speech as now written, and yet it contains 
matter to grind up into dust Calhoun's and Webster's speeches, 
and also Calhoun's Patronage Report." 

In Professor Hoppin's " Memoir of Henry Armitt Brown " 
occurs this passage : " He said of a political, notably self-opin- 
ionated opponent, who on one occasion was accused by a 
speaker of his own party of being an infidel, ' An infidel — not 
so ; he is a self-made man, and he worships his creator.' " 
Upon this the " Nation " remarks that it was long before 1872 
that Henry Clapp applied this remark to the late Mr. Greeley. 

" How do you know, Mr. Greeley," asked Mr. Curtis, " when 
you have succeeded in a public address?" To which Mr. 
Greeley jocosely replied, " When more stay in than go out." 



B.1782. DANIEL WEBSTER. D. 1852. 

There is hardly a scrap of self-applause to be found in Web- 
ster's career — not even in the Boswellian " Reminiscences " 
of Peter Harvey. Of course Webster knew that all the world 
never estimated him at any less than the equal of the greatest 
men of his day, whether at the Bar or in the Senate, but he 
seems to have been absolutely clear of all vanity. 

When his father scolded because Daniel proposed to follow 
the advice of Mr. Gore and to decline the offered county-court 
clerkship, he is reported in Harvey's " Reminiscences " to have 
said : — 

"You may need money, but that is not everything we live 
for. You yourself would be glad to see your son rise to emi- 
nence, and be a man among his fellows, — which no man ever 
was as a clerk of a court. I am more than half inclined to think 
Mr. Gore's advice is good. It may seem otherwise just now, 
but I feel a prompting within me that tells me there is some- 
thing better for me than to be a clerk of court. My mind is 
made up." 



68 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1782. THOMAS HART BENTON. D. 1858. 

In his " Thirty Years in the United States Senate," the late 
Senator Benton gathered together the most important speeches 
and acts of the author, to which he makes other Senators play 
a secondary part ; but it is valuable as an authentic view of one 
side, at least, of the political questions debated during that 
time. In his Preface to the work, referring to what Mr. Ma- 
caulay had said of the eminent qualifications of Fox and Mack- 
intosh for writing history, " that they had spoken history, acted 
history, and lived history," Mr. Benton says, " I can say I 
have these advantages." While this was true, there was a 
largeness in the application that only a veteran egotist would 
have risked. " Old Bullion," as his friends loved to call him, 
because, denouncing paper money, he advocated measures that 
would make u gold to glisten through the interstices of every 
man's silken purse," was a man of much intellectual force, 
sustained by the most vigilant industry, and he must be in- 
cluded among the first dozen statesmen of his country during 
his era ; but he was his own towering darling, and belonged 
to that class alluded to by Washington Irving when he referred 
to a man of some pomposity as " a great man, and, in his own 
estimation, a man of great weight. When he goes to the 
west, he thinks the east tips up." In relation to Benton's 
expunging resolution, when upon its final passage, and after 
three years of agitation, he exclaimed : " Solitary and alone, 
and amidst the jeers and taunts of my opponents, I put this 
ball in motion,^ 

Colonel Fremont did not marry his daughter, Jessie Benton, 
so the Senator asserted, but Jessie Benton married Colonel 
Fremont ; and in the notice of the wedding in the newspapers 
at the time, the name of the lady was put first. 



B. 1742. ETHAN ALLEN. D. 1789. 

The conflict of the Green Mountain Boys with the " York- 
ers," was as loud in words as in acts. Ethan Allen was not 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 69 

wont to bridle his tongue, especially when flushed with success, 
and his abuse of Clinton was a torrent that always roared. His 
bravery in action is not to be disputed ; but it may be ques- 
tioned whether his big words were not always bigger than even 
his rashest deeds. " Had I but the orders," said he, " I could 
go to Albany and be head monarch in three weeks, and I have 
a good mind to do it." 



B. 1765. "WILLIAM PINKNEY. I). 1822. 

Orators are seldom good listeners, and when a rival speaks, 
" they would rather hear a cat mew or an axle grate." 

William Pinkney, of Maryland, while a member of Congress, 
made one speech while in the House of Representatives, and 
one other while in the Senate, but had neither reported, as, 
when read, he feared they might not sustain the very high rep- 
utation won when delivered. He was undoubtedly a great ora- 
tor, though not less vain of his dress than of his speech ; and 
his eloquence will not perhaps be insufficiently praised if it 
should be said to equal his vanity. Mr. Samuel Dexter, of 
Massachusetts, also an eminent lawyer, was replying to Mr. 
Rush in the Supreme Court, when the latter, turning to Mr. 
Pinkney, said, " That is a very able argument." " Wait till 
you hear me," was the response. 

Orators of the same age frequently seem prone to detract 
from the merits of each other. Cicero and his contemporaries 
were as much addicted to this habit as Brougham and his 
English contemporaries. 

The " Edinburgh Review " had praised a speech made in 
Parliament by the late Earl of Normandy, when Brougham 
wrote to the editor and said the speech was very good, only 
that it should have been less praised, adding, " He is an excel- 
lent fellow, and deserves great credit; but truth to tell, his 
speech was a failure, so much so that I was forced to bear 
down to his assistance." 



70 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1794. BRYANT. D. 1878. 

" So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw 
Unheeded by the living, and no friend 
Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of Care 
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase 
His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
And make their bed with thee." 



B. 1793. THADDEUS STEVENS. D. 1868. 

The repartee of Thad. Stevens was unequalled, and swift 
wit and dry humor marked his daily career. As an example, 
not of vanity, but of the "Great Commoner's" hope of 
intellectual immortality, I will cite his questions to the two 
stout officers of the House of Representatives who, in his last 
days, used to carry him in a large arm-chair from his lodgings 
across the public grounds up the broad stairs of the National 
Capitol : " Who will be so good to me and take me up in their 
strong arms when you two mighty men are gone ? " 

There are some people who imagine they rob themselves by 
the bestowment of any praise, and that their " basket and 
store " of merits will be increased by hearty detraction of 
others. They are rare critics, and will only " look at the re- 
verse side of all tapestry, and see nothing in work not done by 
themselves but the fag-ends of thread ; " but these are all 
obedient to the maxim, "Never speak evil of yourself; your 
friends will speak enough." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 71 



B. 1811. OWEN LOVEJOY. D. 1864. 

Owen Lovejoy once told me, before he was in Congress, that 
when he preached a poor sermon he never let it out ; for as 
likely as not half his congregation might call it very good. 

Dr. Johnson advised Boswell, " Never speak ill of yourself, 
because, besides being exaggerated in repetition, it will proba- 
bly be repeated as the result of direction or discovery by oth- 
ers, and not even your indiscreet frankness will be credited to 

you." 



B. 1804. HAWTHORNE. D. 1864. 

It would seem that Hawthorne did not win his solid reputa- 
tion suddenly ; and perhaps his brief " Campaign Life of Frank- 
lin Pierce," when a candidate for the Presidency, up to that 
time was his most profitable work, and fortunately won for 
him the consulship at Liverpool ; but his later works have 
elevated his name to a high place among American authors. 
He was disposed to criticise and to depreciate, rather than to 
exalt, his literary productions. As an example, I take from 
the Preface to his " Twice-told Tales " the following : — 

" The author of c Twice-told Tales ' has a claim to one dis- 
tinction, which, as none of his literary brethren will care 
about disputing it with him, he must not be afraid to mention. 
He w r as for a good many years the obscurest man of letters in 
America. 

" This has been particularly the fortune of the ' Twice-told 
Tales.' They made no enemies, and were so little known and 
talked about, that those who read and chanced to like them 
were apt to conceive the sort of kindness for the book which a 
person naturally feels for a discovery of his own." 



72 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B.1803. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

In his essay upon " G-reatness," Emerson says : — 
" There is a prize we are all aiming at, and the more power 
and goodness we have, so much more the energy of that aim. 
Every human being has a right to it, and in the pursuit we do 
not stand in eacli other's way. . . . I prefer to call it greatness. 
It is the fulfilment of a natural tendency in each man. It is a 
fruitful study. It is the best tonic to the young soul. And no 
man is unrelated ; therefore we admire eminent men, not for 
themselves, but as representatives. It is very certain that we 
ought not to be, and shall not be, contented with any goal we 
have reached. Our aim is no less than greatness ; that which 
invites all belongs to us all — to which we are all sometimes 
untrue, cowardly, faithless, but of which we never quite de- 
spair, and which in every sane moment we resolve to make 
our own." 



WALT WHITMAN, 

It has been rather wickedly said that every poet feels that 
he is a boon for which the age that has him should be grateful. 
This may be true of at least one ; and Walt Whitman's poems, 
patronized though they are by Tennyson, I fear are not win- 
ning all the gratitude due from America. 

He says : — 

" Divine am I, inside and out; I make holy whatever I touch, or am touched 
from." 

Here is one more example of his peculiar style : — 

" I conned old times, 
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters ; 
Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me ! " 

In the works of Brj^ant, Longfellow, Whittier, and other 
eminent American poets, it will, I believe, be difficult to point 
out a single example of lusty self-appreciation. 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 73 



B. 1265. DANTE. D. 1321. 

Dante speaks of Alexander Gill, his old schoolmaster, as one 
who " taught him how man eternizes himself." 

The Government of Florence banished Dante in 1302, but in 
1316 put forth a new decree permitting exiles to return on con- 
ditions of fine and penance ; but Dante rejected the offer with 
great scorn. " Is this," wrote he, " then the glorious return 
of Dante Alighieri to his country after nearly three lustres of 
suffering exile ? Did an innocence, patent to all, merit this ? 
This the perpetual sweat and toil of study ? Far from a man, 
the housemate of philosophy, be so rash and earthen-hearted 
a humility as to allow himself to be offered up, bound like a 
school-boy or a criminal ! Far from a man, the preacher of 
justice, to pay those who have done him wrong, as a favor ! 
This is not the way of returning to my country ; but if another 
can be found that shall not derogate from the fame of Dante, 
that I will enter on with no lagging steps. For if by none 
such Florence may be entered, by me then never ! Can I not 
everywhere behold the mirrors of the sun and stars, — speculate 
on sweetest truths under any sky, — without first giving myself 
up inglorious, nay, ignominious, to the populace and city of 
Florence ? Nor shall I want bread." 

The last lines of an inscription he dictated on his death-bed, 
for his monument, show that he never returned to Florence : — 

" Here am I, Dante, shut, exiled from the ancestral shore, 
Whom Florence, the of all least-loving mother, bore." 

And yet in 1396, and again in 1429, Florence begged in vain 
for the ashes of the poet she threatened to destroy when alive. 

Dante unceremoniously classifies himself with the great 
poets. 1 

1 " Vidi quattro grand' ombre a ma venire."^ 
10 



74 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 



B. 1304. PETRARCH. D. 1374. 

Petrarch loved the fame of more sonnets better than Laura, 
as was shown by his reply when the Pope offered to absolve 
him from his vows of celibacy. " I have," said he, " still too 
many sonnets to write." 



B. 1474. MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI. D. 1564. 

Michael Angelo was great as a sculptor, painter, and archi- 
tect, and was also the author of many sonnets. He was pos- 
sibly best satisfied with his works as sculptor, until he painted 
the frescos in the Sistine Chapel ; and then possibly best 
pleased with his fame as a painter, until he achieved even a 
greater reputation as an architect, especially of St. Peter's at 
Rome. At a time when he thought Pope Julius II. listened 
too much to his enemies, he wrote this sonnet : — 

TO POPE JULIUS II. 

My lord ! if ever ancient saw spake sooth, 

Hear this which saith : Who can, doth never will. 

Lo ! thou hast but thine ear to fables still, 
Kewarding those who hate the name of truth. 
I am thy drudge, and have been from my youth, — 

Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill ; 

Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill : 
The more I toil, the less 1 move thy ruth. 

Once, 't was my hope to raise me by thy height ; 
But 't is the balance and the powerful sword 

Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need. 

Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite 
Here on the earth, if this be our reward, — 

To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed. 

Michael Angelo was employed many years on his work of 
St. Peter's without pay, and was often badly treated by those 
around him ; but, although this was the work of his old age, 
it was a great work, and he never lost confidence in himself. 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 75 

The following is an extract from one of his letters, showing 
that he believed he had been chosen by God for this work : — 
" I have always held it to be a condition not to leave Rome 
till I have carried on the building of St. Peter's so far that it 
cannot be altered from my design nor spoilt, and also not to 
give an opportunity to robbers to return and to plunder, as 
they did before and hope to do again. These have been my 
objects, and are so still : to carry out which many believe, as 
I do, that I have been chosen by God." 



B. 1773. MBTTERNICH. D. 1859. 

Prince Metternich of Austria, the great Chancellor of Francis 
I., wielded immense political power in Europe during great 
historical events, and for a great number of years. In ques- 
tions of state he had to grapple with masters in diplomacy, — 
with Canning, Wellington, Nesselrode, and Napoleon ; and 
there is no doubt that Austria under his lead reached its 
highest position among nations. Kings and emperors were 
battling for thrones, and Metternich was the prince of aristo- 
crats, though the life-long slave of royalty, whose prerogatives 
he upheld with a vigor and tenacity which secured the admira- 
tion of his masters and the hatred of all liberal-minded men. 

The following is copied from a letter of Metternich to his 
wife, Aug. 26, 1818 : — 

" I shall be at Frankfort on the 29th, and spend two days 
there. I shall have the entire Diet on my hands. I know 
already that most of the ministers there are trembling at my 
appearance ; of my forty-eight hours, I shall take at least 
from twelve to fifteen to lecture the well-intentioned, and to do 
justice to those who are not. My two days at Frankfort will, 
however, be worth at least a hundred as far as business is 
concerned." 

Having been foolishly lauded in the Paris " Moniteur," 
January, 1820, he wrote to one of his correspondents : — 

" To me undoubtedly, I openly allow, stupid blame is pleas- 
anter than stupid praise : the first may amuse, but cannot 



76 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

anger me ; the latter, on the contrary, might make me treat 
my awkward friend somewhat rudely. 

" If any one wishes to write my history, let him have full 
freedom to the judgment of posterity, which alone can speak 
with authority of the men who have contributed to make the 
history of their time." 

1820, April 19. "Posterity will judge me, — the only 
judgment which I covet ; the only one to which I am not 
indifferent, and which I shall never know." 

1820, May 15. u On this day, in the year 1773, precisely at 
twelve o'clock, I was presented to the world." 

" Seven and forty years is a long time, quite too long. I 
have in this weary life, thank God ! preserved that strong 
vitality of heart which is a preservative against the passing 
away of any feeling. At twenty I was the same man I am 
to-day. I was always what I am, good or bad, strong or 
weak." 

1820, March 22. " My poor Clementine [his daughter] is 
still very ill. Nothing breaks me down like a sick child ; 
never anxious about myself, I am always so for the children. 

" Meanwhile, whether I like it or not, I must sit for many 
hours at my writing-table. In painful moments like the pres- 
ent, it is more than ever necessary to turn my second nature 
outside, — that nature which makes many people believe that 
I have no heart. They would deny me head too, if I did not 
occasionally let them know that it remains firm when they 
knock at it." 

From Metternich's letter to his son Victor, May 31, 1826 : — 

u The Liberals have a peculiar talent for deceiving them- 
selves : the reason is that their cause rests on error, and 
knows not how to produce anything else ! To defeat these 
men one has only to wait ; to reach them one has but to 
stand still. But herein lies the difficulty of the work : and 
if God has given me one quality, it is that of being able to 
support the state, firm and upright, in the midst of tumult. 
This is what I have known how to do ever since I have been 
at the head of affairs ; and certainly I shall not discontinue 
what I have found so valuable a specific. When I look around 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 77 

me and find only myself standing on a field strewn with dead 
and wounded, I must say decidedly that I have chosen a good 
place ! They shall never make more, and the Liberals, with 
their whole following of fools and doctrinaires, shall not win 
the day as long as God gives me strength." 
From a letter to Neumann, June 12, 1826 : — 
" Men like Canning fall twenty times and rise twenty times ; 
men like myself have not the trouble of getting up, for they 
are not so subject to fall." 

From letters to his son Victor, 1818, Jan. 24 : — 
" I have observed affairs too closely, and Heaven has given 
me too sure an instinct, that I should not have some foresight. 
This is what M. de Yillele lacked. He was a man of business, 
not a statesman." 

" My attention and my efforts are directed towards England 
and Turkey. Canning wished to kill me ; it is I who have 
killed him and his feeble acolytes. There are resources in 
England, for there is a public spirit ; and it is this very spirit 
that is wanting in France. That country is rotten to the 
core." 

On his fifty-fifth anniversary he wrote to his son : — 
" I desire to live to guide your career, to put our domestic 
affairs on a footing that will give you the least possible diffi- 
culty. I wish to live, too, for public matters, since the world 
yet has need of me, were it only that I hold a place which no 
one else could fill. To be what I am, my antecedents are 
necessary, and one can as little replace an old minister as 
an old tree." 

B. 1814. PRINCE BISMARCK. 

Bismarck appears quite conscious of the power he has so 
long held behind the Throne; and the " mild absolutism" 
which he prompted has been a perpetual strain upon the gov- 
ernment of his King. " If," said Bismarck, " the King could 
stand the strain on him for three or four years — and I allowed 
there was one, the estrangement of the public being very 
painful and disagreeable to him — he would certainly win his 



78 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 

game. Unless he got tired and left me in the lurch, I would 
not fail him. If he were to appeal to the people, and put 
it to the vote, he would even now have nine tenths of them in 
his favor. The Emperor, at the time (1855), said of me, ' Ce 
rCest pas un homme serieux, y [' He is not a man of conse- 
quence ',] a mot of which I did not think myself at Kberty to 
remind him in the weaving-shed at Doncherry." 

While in attendance upon the siege of Paris he was impa- 
tient of delay, and really believed he might have cut a larger 
figure if he had been an officer. At dinner (December 24) he 
observed, " Had I been an officer — and I wish I had been — 
I should have had an army now, and we should not have been 
stuck here outside of Paris." 



B. 1807. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

In his poem on the Fiftieth Anniversary of his College Class 
it will be seen how modestly and delicately he refers to the 
future. 

" Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose 
Phantoms of fame like exhalations rose 
And vanished, we who are about to die 
Salute you ! 

Ye do not answer us ! ye do not hear ; 
We are forgotten, and in your austere 
And calm indifference ye little care 
Whether we come or go, or whence or where. 
What passing generations fill these halls, 
What passing voices echo from these walls, 
Ye heed not ; we are only as the blast, 
A moment heard, and then forever past." 

This, at least, offers one illustration of the doctrine, that 
" no really great man ever thought himself so ; " but Longfellow 
need have no fear that his name will not be " fast anchored in 
the deep abyss of time." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. 79 



B. 1771. SIR WALTER SCOTT. D. 1832. 

Few men with a reputation so wide and enduring as that of 
Sir Walter Scott have been more modest and clear of all mani- 
festations of vanity, — excluding, of course, his fond idea of 
establishing a great family seat at Abbotsford, — and it may 
be admitted, also, that ultimately he became as fond of being 
lionized as even Macaulay. He was in no hurry to avow him- 
self as the "Great Unknown" author of the Waverley Novels, 
the Wizard of the North ; and when he modestly began his 
Autobiography, cheerfully took a lower seat than the world 
willingly accords to him, saying, " Not being endowed with 
the talents of Burns or Chatterton, I have been delivered also 
from their temptations." In other words, he did not get drunk, 
nor was he an inspired impostor. 

Walter Scott once wrote to his publisher, James Ballantyne, 
who had been offering some unwelcome hints, as follows : " I 
value your criticisms as much as ever, but the worst is, my 
faults are better known to myself than to you. Tell a young 
beauty that she wears an unbecoming dress, or speaks too 
loud, or any other fault she can correct, and she will do so if 
she has sense and a good opinion of your taste. But tell a 
failing beauty that her hair is getting gray, her wrinkles ap- 
parent, her gait heavy, and that she has no business in a ball- 
room but to be ranged against the wall as an evergreen, and 
you will afflict the poor old lady without rendering her any 
service. She knows all that better than you. I am sure the 
old lady in question takes pains enough with her toilet." 



CONCLUSION. 

Though obtrusive vanity or self-glorification is ever very 
much disliked, especially by those afflicted with the same in- 
firmity, it is very closely allied to the virtues, for the reason 
that men know praise or fame, which vain men so devoutly 
seek, will be more speedily and abundantly acquired through 



80 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 

noble and virtuous actions than in any other way. A vain or 
proud man is often kept on a high plane, above doing a mean 
thing, — above being false to his wife, or scrimping the school 
days of his children, or neglecting the unfortunate in the hour 
of distress, — because it elevates and preserves his reputation 
among those whose opinion he most values. It may keep the 
young lady from soiling dainty hands, but it also keeps her, 
when transformed into the immaculate housewife, at war with 
every abomination. It keeps the work of men always at their 
best : the mechanic at the top of his skill, the merchant ever 
mindful of the upright and downright in trade ; the pulpit and 
the bar it pushes on to effort and to eloquence ; makes the 
soldier brave in battle, and the politician ashamed not to be 
a patriot. 

It is sometimes supposed that the fair sex have more vanity 
than men. If that were true — which I should not dare to 
maintain — when it is understood to be so often founded on 
beauty, who would deny that it rests on an ample basis ? Why, 
take the handsomest gentleman of the town, decorate him as a 
lady as much as you please, and how ugly he would appear, 
comparatively, witli the very plainest of the other sex ! 

But there is no dearth of eminent female artists or authors ; 
in fact they may be said to have almost created within the past 
century a milky way among the fixed stars of art and polite 
literature ; and I do not find them more pronounced — rather 
less — in good opinions of themselves than men. They do not 
like to be called old or ugly ; and who can blame them ? 

Even men never get so old but that they can be cheated by 
the flattery of friends who tell them, without a blush for the 
falsehood, that they do not appear any older than they did 
years ago ! 

But, notwithstanding many really great men have often pa- 
raded a self-consciousness of their merits, and seem to have 
demanded, while living, from their fellow-men a full measure of 
approbation, it must, on the whole, like spots on the sun, be 
regarded as a defect. There is infinite wisdom in the proverb : 

" Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth ; 
A stranger, and not thine own lips." 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OP NOTED PERSONS. 81 

The whole doctrine of Christianity, as well as of good breeding, 
teaches humility : " for he that is least among you all, the same 
shall be great." And on the whole, though it may be a noble 
incentive to virtue to hope for human applause after " life's 
fitful fever " is o'er ; yet so long as you remain on earth, if you 
really believe there is a bigger fool in the world than yourself, 
you better not go and tell him of it. If you do, you will 
find he thinks just the same of you, and it may turn out a tie 
vote, or as in the case of a lawyer who told another that he 
was " no gentleman," and got in reply, " You are no judge." 

Vainglorying is often as conspicuous in the domesticated 
animal kingdom as among the most self-satisfied of the human 
race. They like the approbation of their masters. The horse, 
when the rein is given, likes to leap by any other slower-going 
roadster, and becomes angry and impatient at any rival's attempt 
to outstrip him on the highway. The horse, like the rural 
beau, never forgets to show the best pace as he comes into town. 
The pointer dog expects to be petted when it brings the game 
to the huntsman. It may be doubtful whether or not beasts of 
the field and fowls of the barnyard, do not outrank in conceit 
the lords of creation ; and it would seem that the latter should 
assume the virtue of modesty, though they have it not, where 
the peacock is their equal, and the turkey gobbler their 
superior. 

One thing is certain : society loves with more alacrity those 
whose motives imply as generous consideration of others as of 
themselves, and who are not visibly self-centred. 

If it appears that there is frequent folly in the exhibitions of 
this great human passion for the approbation of posterity, and 
if it be true, as we all believe, that we are only waiting, like 
travellers at some railroad depot, for the next train which is 
to carry us to a higher sphere, with an immortality freed from 
human doubt, how much more important is it that we should 
anxiously labor for the approbation of the Giver of Eternal 
Life ! 

At the end of most Roman tragedies or comedies we find the 
word " Plaudite" 

11 



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